The Eng Chuan Tong Tan Kongsi (Tan Clan Association) celebrated the Dong Zhi (Winter Solstice Festival) with a dinner cum karaoke just now. Like last year, my neighbours with the Tan surname, Soon Leong and wife, Mr. Tan and I, attended the function. More than three hundred clansmen and their family were there. It was an eight-course dinner that began promptly at 8pm. Clan gatherings like this is a good way to renew kinships and forge new ones. Although I attended the same function last year, it was still an awesome experience to be among so many clansmen at the same place and time.

Eng Chuan Tong Tan Kongsi at Halaman Seh Tan, Penang.

The ornate Tan Kongsi granite facade.

The ancestral altar.

Tan and Tan and Tan and Tan …