This essay is part of our 2023 Southeast Asian New Year mini-series. While Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora celebrated the Lunar New Year earlier this year, diaCRITICS acknowledges that many other Southeast Asian countries follow a different tradition. This includes Thingyan from Myanmar, Pi Mai from Laos, Songkran from Thailand, and Choul Chnam Thmey or Moha Sankranti from Cambodia. In this mini-series, writers reflect on the meaning of their new year.
There’s already a large pile of shoes on the mat outside the Wat Willow entrance, even though we tried to leave home early. A sea of men’s identical dress shoes greets us at the doorway, broken up by strappy stilettos and pumps knocked askew here and there. I seem to always be the last one in my family to get their shoes off, because I’m a pre-teen and still not steady in heels on account of only wearing them to year-end events at school. My stress level spikes as I balance on one heeled foot, trying to undo the buckle of my shoe strap on the other. I get them off at last, strategically nesting them in a pile of my family’s shoes in hopes of recovering them easily later. No one at wat ever loses their shoes, somehow.
Inside the temple is a cavernous room. Along one wall, monks in tangerine robes sit on a platform stage chanting scripture in Pali, the ancient language of Theravada Buddhism. A mass of people sit on the ground facing the monks. We find a patch of empty rug and kneel to sit, heads slightly bowed and looking down, hands in prayer. The proper way to sit is boht cheung, with your legs folded to one side. I think it’s supposed to be more graceful than sitting cross-legged. This forces me to sit with my best posture, while guaranteeing that a leg will fall asleep in due time.
The monks’ rhythmic chanting is hypnotic. I find the sound of these words that I can’t even understand soothing, but I feel false, like an imposter, because I’m not actually praying. I have never prayed before; I wouldn’t even know what to ask, or to whom. While my parents are Buddhist, they didn’t raise us to practice it. Still, they brought their children to temple for these cultural celebrations, where faith featured prominently. It would feel disrespectful to not assume a prayer position, though, so I go through the motions, wondering what it is I’m supposed to be thinking about.
My family would visit temple mid-April every year to observe Cambodian New Year. Our hometown of Long Beach, California has the largest population of Cambodian Americans in the country, including my family. Our apartment filled with the heavy smell of burning incense for a week, the scent lazily wafting through the air. Cambodian New Year is typically a three-day celebration, but my mom would start preparing our home a week in advance, tidying up and assembling our living room altar, starting with a bouquet of fresh flowers. I’d watch as she arranged an eclectic assortment of fruit: mango, persimmons, bananas, grapes, oranges, lychees. Sometimes she’d make sticky rice desserts wrapped in banana leaves; other times, store-bought moon cakes and Marie-Lu cookies, certainly not Cambodian staples, made a cross-cultural appearance. I’d ask why I couldn’t eat these carefully arranged foods, poking and prodding at the goods.
“They’re for thevada,” my mom said, meaning the deities.
Where is thevada? I’d wonder. Was it the giant poster of the androgynous Buddha that hung on the wall? How would they actually eat this food? And what if it went bad before then?
Cambodian New Year marks the end of the dry harvest season in Cambodia, when rice farmers stopped working in preparation for the rainy season to come. The celebration originally lasted one month, but has shortened to three formal days of festivities in recent decades. On the first day, it is believed that a new god is appointed to oversee and protect you for the year, so you dress up in your best clothes and prepare your home to welcome thevada in. The following days are devoted to giving—to charity, monks, or elders. People bring food and money to temple as offerings in tribute to ancestors, while participating in cleansing rituals to wash away any past sins.
My parents came from rice farming families in the Cambodian village provinces of Takeo and Prey Veng, where these New Year’s rituals had a direct correlation to their agrarian lifestyle. It was clear what to pray for: rain to ensure a bountiful harvest, to sustain your family and way of life. I felt so far removed from this tradition, born and raised in a city with no real connection to the land around me. I was missing something to link me to my parents’ home, and noticed it especially when I hesitantly pressed my hands together every April.
We’d burn incense in the center of our altar, with the sticks propped up in a jar of rice grains next to flickering white votive candles. Our lit home altar made me feel cozy and festive in the way I imagined other people felt about their Christmas trees.
At temple, I felt less cozy and more vigilant, like an ethnographer in training. I’d watch people partake in a variety of activities while trying to stay out of their way: lighting incense at the altar, portioning out the rice your family brought to share with the monks, or adding more food to a literal mountain of Styrofoam bowls of offerings. This all happened under the monks’ continuous chanting, which competed with the dull roar of conversation from the crowd.
When the noise and incense became too much, I’d go outside and wander the temple grounds. I’d follow the intoxicating smell of the champa flower, with its long, cream-colored petals that my mom would tie in our hair for special occasions. There was a large champa tree in front of the red brick entrance to the wat, where we’d take our annual sister photos.
We’d visit wat at least once a year until I left for college. My siblings would flit in and out of the excursions over the years depending on their college schedules, but if the three sisters were ever there at the same time (my brother did not like photos), we’d be sure to take a moment to pose. Flipping through those shots was a great way to track the passage of time, noting how some of us would get taller, chubbier, then thinner again, less awkward and more confident, eventually. The flowers and bushes behind us were similarly caught in various stages of bloom from season to season, with the brick wall background serving as silent witness, never changing.
*
I’m standing at the back corner of the outdoor stage, waiting for the first beat of the roneat xylophone as the cue to make my entrance. I’m performing at the Cambodian New Year’s festival in Long Beach and the tent is packed with a captive seated audience, but I try not to look at anyone for fear of losing focus on the choreography. I pray to the powers that be—whomever they are—that I don’t drop the metal goblet balancing in my palm throughout the performance.
As the music starts, I step out into the center of the stage in a few paces, holding the goblet in front of my chest with one hand. I flex and rotate my fingers on the other, alternating through the gestures for flower and leaf. My senses turn toward my body—the snug fit of my satin bodice top, embellished with tiny beads whose threads snag on the chains draped across my chest; the stiff fabric of the silk kben pant-skirt, which a cadre of Khmer dance moms carefully shaped and structured to my body; the heavy gold bracelets and anklets, held together by thread, clinking with every move I make.
The music swells to harmony as percussive and stringed instruments join in. I feel at ease. Chun Por is the Wishing Dance, traditionally performed at events as a blessing of good tidings for all who attend. Seven women perform the dance, and at the climax, each dancer tosses flower petals from their goblet towards the audience, leaving a dusting of pink and white well wishes on the stage floor.
In the closing of Chun Por, I lead the rest of the dancers in a fast-paced march back and forth across the stage to our final exit. The skor drums beat loudly, guiding the momentum of our movements. It’s one of my favorite sections because our collective energy is high, and because it means we’re almost done and there’s little room left to mess anything up. And yet, as I steer the line of dancers around our final corner, I kick a loose anklet off of my foot, hearing it clatter while hitting the back wall of the stage—ah, well. After a couple years of dancing, I’ve learned that something is usually falling off of me by the end of a performance.
For a few of my pre-teen years, my sister Khemara and I took Cambodian classical dance lessons through a community group in Long Beach. In addition to weekly classes, this youth dance troupe performed at local events and festivals, including the New Year celebration in Long Beach’s El Dorado Park, where thousands of Cambodians from throughout the state and beyond would flock once a year.
Our dance lessons provided an avenue for cultural connection, and I quickly learned that I had a knack for mimicking the poses and forms of the dance style. It was refreshing to discover a natural skill, with the added bonus that it gave me a claim to my culture that I felt was legitimate. Putting in the work to master the controlled, precise style of the dance was satisfying, such that the jewel-toned silk costumes we got to wear for performances became like a reward for the labor.
Once the performance was over, the outdoor festival provided another sensory overload of its own. Thousands attended to enjoy the live performances, food stalls, and pop-up play attractions scattered throughout the park. Teens ran about throwing baby powder at friends in a lively take on a traditional cleansing ritual, one that I’d avoid at all costs, claiming my dance costume as a shield of protection. Other than a couple of the girls I danced with and a few kids I knew from school, I didn’t have too many other Cambodian friends, so I never had a pack of peers to roam around with at the park. I don’t think I wanted one, though. While I danced as part of a group, the art form itself felt very solitary to me in a way that I preferred—just me meditating on my movements.
*
I dust off my wooden nightstand, repurposing it for this year’s New Year’s altar because I think its location in front of the window in my Brooklyn bedroom is ideal for offerings. Thevada would like that.
In my seven years of living in New York City, I have never been able to make a trip home in April, so I observe the holiday on my own. I drape a woven silk Khmer scarf over my nightstand, where I place a tray with a grapefruit, mango, bananas, avocados, and mandarins. I arrange a bodega bouquet of tulips in a vase, along with a glass filled with rice grains for holding up incense—sandalwood rose—fresh from the local hipster boutique. I try to remember what other finishing touches my mother always included.
Feeling impossibly far from my family after I moved to the East Coast, I tried to recreate the customs that we used to celebrate together. Every April, my sisters and I would compare our respective home altars through group texts, commenting on brightest bouquets and best fruit variety. Each subsequent year, I’d try to improve upon my previous altar by adding more creative lighting, looking for more desirable fruits in the produce aisles, and adding any more Cambodian touches—a flag, a krama scarf—that I could think of. I had a lot of fun setting this up every year, a shrine to my childhood memories, exported 2,000 miles away.
I had gotten used to this solo altar routine until 2020, when I started a new job where my schedule for once didn’t keep me booked in April. At last, my chance to finally go home for a New Year’s in Long Beach. I hadn’t been home since Christmas, so it would be nice to see everyone mid-year for a change. I looked forward to dressing up in temple wear and setting foot in that cavernous room again with its scents and all, curious to see if I’d feel more at ease after all these years.
March 2020 rolled around and Covid-19 rapidly escalated into a public health crisis with social distancing measures changing our daily routines. I had to cancel my flight home as cases skyrocketed in New York and the prospect of my traveling anywhere disappeared. I would have to settle for celebrating the New Year alone, in my apartment, yet again.
To salvage the celebration, though, I planned a family Zoom meeting for my siblings where we would dress up in traditional wear and have a Cambodian meal together, through our screens. My oldest sister Socheata relayed the message to our group text, consisting of the four Has siblings and two of their spouses:
“Veasna wants to do a small family Khmer New Year Zoom, Monday 6pm PST,” she wrote. “We’re gonna have curry and wear Khmer outfits. Each household can play one new year song of their choosing that will not be interrupted by another song.”
“Our song will be ‘New Year’s Day’ by U2,” my brother quipped, never a fan of tradition.
That morning, I woke up early and put on a shimmery peach lace and satin Cambodian blouse that my mom lent me; wore jeans for the day instead of my usual pandemic pajamas; and even put on some makeup to mark the occasion. I lit the incense at my altar and sat on the ground for a few minutes, thinking about the unexpected year we were in and what I could still be grateful for—my health, my family, a stable job. I took my requisite Instagram selfie and posted it, tagging the handful of Khmer friends I knew online and wishing them a soursdey chnam thmey.
In an ambitious attempt to make this virtual celebration memorable, I decided to make my mom’s chicken curry for dinner. To date, I had cooked exactly one Cambodian dish before—a braised pork stew—and it had taken several tries to even get that right. This curry was easily one of her specialties, her go-to for temple and potlucks. My mom never wrote down recipes, so I Googled a few options whose ingredients resembled what I remembered of my mom’s kitchen. I found a Thai red curry paste at my local grocery store and gathered chicken cutlets, eggplants, potatoes, coconut milk, fish sauce, and palm sugar to round out the list.
After a half hour of hovering over the stovetop pot, the aroma filling my kitchen started accurately recalling the scents I knew from home. I took a photo of the simmering red-orange concoction to text to my parents. I logged on to join the New Year’s Zoom, with a bowl of curry and rice ready to show. My siblings’ faces appeared in their respective rectangles as we caught up and tried to take turns playing our favorite Cambodian songs (no Bono appearance), whichever ones we could find on Spotify. We could barely hear the music under the constant commotion of our voices, though. Happy New Year! Happy New Year! What are you eating? I can’t hear that song! Speak into the mic. Are you muted?
Gathering virtually was a nice enough idea, but we probably spent more time yelling over each other, futzing with the audio, and taking photos of our screens than anything else. Halfway through the call, Socheata FaceTimed our parents in on her phone—we didn’t trust that they could join a Zoom on their own—and they appeared in their grid-within-a-grid, contributing their own garbled commentary about how we all looked on-screen. The call lasted two hours before I lost steam, a casualty to the time zone difference.
We couldn’t gather at temple, but we’d managed to replicate a sensory overload of our own, from opposite coasts. After logging off, I lit my incense stick in the kitchen with a stovetop burner and carried the jar of grains and sticks back to my altar. I sat boht cheung and contemplated the evening scent, watching as the burning incense crumbled into grey ash while pins and needles slowly overcame my legs, just as they always had.
Veasna Has is a writer and nonprofit administrator interested in storytelling through written, cinematic, and dance mediums. Her writing explores themes of family and cultural identity, rooted in her Cambodian American upbringing. Veasna’s work has been supported by the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference and Kundiman. Born and raised in Long Beach, California, she currently calls Queens, New York home.
