I am feeling particularly good about this Lunar New Year. That’s because I was given an “ang pow” (red packet with money) by the God of Wealth personally.
Luck be with you – the God of Wealth
I ran into him at a new year’s party hosted by George Town Heritage + Hotels in Penang and that red packet he gave me, I will keep and cherish. It’s meant to bring me luck for the whole year.
Perhaps it will be even powerful enough to ward off the bad stuff that’s sure to come our way from all the things the God of Wrath on the other side of the world has done in his first seven days in the White House, and looks likely to be doing.
As is customary during this festive period, I had asked a fortune teller what the Fire Rooster Year would bring and he said, “There will be lots of fires lit around the world. We all just have to wait for the fires to reach each of us eventually.”
The day he said this, the aforementioned God of Wrath signed the executive order suspending his country’s refugee programme and specifically suspending all immigration for citizens of seven majority Muslim countries – Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen – for 90 days.
You really don’t have to be a fortune teller to predict the far-reaching consequences of such a move.
Watching what’s unravelling in America from a distance, it’s been hard not to get caught up with the emotion of this moment in history, and be dumbstruck that something like this has actually happened in a country we thought, rightly or wrongly, embraced diversity like no other.
I grew up in Malaysia with diversity. My playmates in school came from all faiths – Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Taoists. We only notice diversity when it is absent.
The same week I happened to be showing three American friends from New York around Penang – two of them on their first trip to Asia – and they couldn’t believe how there’d be an Indian temple next to a mosque that’s next to a Chinese temple.
And within the Georgetown heritage zone, there’d be British-influenced architecture and Jawi influences, along with myriad other cultures. When I told them that Penang is home to the oldest Jewish cemetery in South-east Asia, they asked in wonderment, “How did they get here, why would they come here?”
Their perception had been that Malaysia was a Muslim country and it was only when they visited that they realised how multi-racial we are, and that everything we are, live and breathe is a result of the diversity we embrace.
Just like New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Being urban dwellers and both immigrants from Eastern Europe, I could sense they were both appalled and embarrassed by the new President of their adopted country. By the same token, it is also clear that not everyone feels the same way about him, much as we’d like to believe from our own filtered social media feeds.
I ran into a friend who lived and made his fortune in California and has now returned to Penang to enjoy the fruits of his labour and he said to me, “I think he’ll make a good President”, and promptly explained why.
I won’t go into his reasons here but if there’s one lesson I have learnt, it’s not to get so caught up in your own social media bubble that you believe there’s only one viewpoint, and so I listened to him.
In the end, we agreed to disagree – and that’s the point with Trump and the issues he’s raising and the feelings he’s sparking. He proposes (on the surface) simplistic solutions to highly divisive issues, and he provokes strong feelings either way.
All I know is for us working in travel, there is only one stance we can take – we stand against anything that places barriers against legitimate travel.
It is good to see some travel companies take a stance against the executive order – Expedia, TripAdvisor, Airbnb being the ones which have made public statements – while there are some who feel that travel should not be mixed up with politics, and have stayed silent. Thing is, it is hard not to get political at times like these especially when politics threatens to restrict freedom of movement of certain individuals and raises questions for the industry, for example, the role of the airlines in the implementation of this Muslim travel ban and the true meaning of hospitality at such challenging times.
The consolation we have is that travel is as old as time – Penang being a good example of a place shaped by travel, past and present – and an executive order from one country singling out one faith for exclusion may not stop it in its tracks, but it is another brick in the wall we do not need.
And oh yes, my American friends, they too got red packets from the God of Wealth. I think we’re all going to need all the luck we can get in this new Age of Unreason.
