christian ‘chai’ for CNY

this year i notice at our church, there was this ‘CNY ‘chai’ for sale. er… how do you call a ‘chai’ in english? simply door banner? you know, during CNY, almost all the household of chinese people, will have the
‘chai’ up at their door-front. every year we have the plain red cloth one (no design whatsoever).

this year, since they are selling the christian ‘chai’, i decided to buy it. as you can see, the ‘chai’ has a picture of the last supper on it. (btw, the pictures you see here – the ‘chai’ is not hanging in my house but at behind the church’s religious stall where it was hung for display). there are some chinese words at both side and at the bottom. i don’t read chinese characters so i asked my friend to read it for me and translate it for me. my friends knows how to read but not sure how to translate. she just mumble something and it was i myself who put in the words for the translation!

to continue reading, please click on ‘more’ below.

anyway, this is what i gather here and there from my friend on what the wordings are.

right side wordings, something like:
cheng ser si chi (which means something like try to be a good person (or a saint?) and help others to be good too).
left side:
sen wah ta ren (which means something like pass on this goodness to others).

am i right or what?

now, the wordings below, something like:
fong tiau yee soon kwok tai ping ang (which means something like the wind and rain calm and peaceful, the world and people calm and peaceful).

terrible translations eh? help needed! from those who are bi-lingual (penang podcast?), those who can first, give the reading of the words in mandarin, and then translate it nicely in english, as poetic as the mandarin ones.

apart from christian ‘chai’, we also have christian angpow. in the year 2004, i blog about CNY in church and show the picture of the angpow. that angpow was from johor and is 9 x 15 cm in size. this year, we have 2 types of angpow but smaller in size – 7 x 10 cm. both of these angpow, have the same designs on the back, while the front have different designs. the back design, as you can see here at the first picture, shows the ‘family year’ logo. as for the front, one of it has the same picture as the old angpow (where i blog about in 2004) and the other has a picture of the holy family with er… some chinese character behind it (as you see in the second picture).

this year, i’ll be attending the chinese new year mass in my church (church of our lady of sorrows in macalister road) which is on 28 jan. at 10.30pm. it will be in both mandarin and english (more on mandarin), and i am chosen to be the english commentator.

after the mass, we will usually have fellowship where the church members will bring some CNY goodies to be shared.