The 7th Month

I attended my first 7th month dinner over the weeked at my in-laws.

So there I was, enjoying the dinner at the void deck area (which means vey warm), and experiencing this highly symbolic event for the first time. The auction (as normal 7th month dinner would have) started as the dinner started. And the entire process didn't end until about 11pm.

I saw this entire event from the symbolic interactionism perspective.

Every auctioned object can be a symbol of something: charcoal is "black gold"; "huat" cake is "prosperity"; rice is also "prosperity"; wine/liquor is "longevity"; lanterns (3 sets altogether) are "prosperity" and "have more children"; and flower of course, you guessed it, "prosperity".

You can thus see the culture of this society: we are a highly materialistic society - we care about making more money and more baby. But can you blame us? Not really. Because that's the essential to our survivol. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, money give us security, food, a place to live, etc. And according to the evolutionary theory, having children is the way to carry on our human species. So these are two very important things in our society.

It was also an occassion for interaction between the neighbours. It was actually quite heartening to know that in this days and age, there still live a highly close-knited community. Perhaps it was an old estate, perhaps it was the fact that in the middle (or fringe) of the town, those are the only four blocks of flats still standing tall (so close proximity), but here, you witnessed the long forgotten "kampung spirit" - the everyone knows everyone situation. Mr Goh was telling me "that was so-and-so's brother and they have this shop downstairs" and "that was whoever's mother"... See them interacting with one another, I remember when we used to be a smaller world.

Not forgetting the "group influence". The dinner area was small, tables were also smaller than your usual wedding dinner tables. So it was a "full-house". As you can imagain, a full house is a good house. People where fed with enough of alcohol to keep their inhibition low. The crowding effect thus can be observed through the shouting for the auction. Competition of couse also brought up the "price" - from $50 to $80 to $188 to $189 and on and on...

It was a lesson of sociology and social psychology in one night.

Oh, the liquor fetched the highest price - so you know what was popular.