#Throwback: 8 DAYS Past Chinese New Year Covers

To usher in the Year of the Rooster, we Talk Co... we mean, Rooster with Tay Ping Hui in last week's cover story. The result? Sheer poultry, we mean, poetry, of course. We also found out during our cover shoot that the 46-year-old star plays with chickens pretty well too — he gets all chook-ed up at the shoot, cradling a faux chicken like the newborn child he doesn’t (yet?) have, and waves a feather duster at Chicken Little like a discipline master (yes, the macabre irony isn’t past us).

When said chicken isn’t in frame, TPH, born the Year of the Dog, commands the stage with deft kungfu moves that Jet Li would approve of. He swings his weapon (yes, the feather duster) like Donnie Yen brandishes his staff in Rogue One. And you better run and hide when the 1.86m-tall actor leaps around the studio with pugilistic perfection. Never mind that, swathed in a trench coat and boots, he looks more suited for autumn in New York than a Mongolian warlord leading a pack of troops in battle. Which is exactly what he did, by the way. He played Genghis Khan in Chinese period drama Legend of the Condor Heroes, and was weighed down by a 15kg costume while he rode one of the 100 horses in the herd. “If I fell off, I’d pretty much get trampled to death,” he recalls of the shoot in China.

Less life-threatening but no less bad-ass is his next project — he reprises the role of villain Peter Tay in Ch 5’s Tanglin, which begins filming this month. Looks like 2017's going to be another eggs-traordinary year for the star.

This Chinese New Year, you can expect Rebecca Lim to be pigging out. When we spoke to the actress about all things CNY in the Year of the Monkey last year, she said that she diets before and after CNY just so she can stuff her face with huat-ever she likes during CNY.

“I only watch what I eat before Chinese New Year to leave some allowance so that during CNY, I can eat as much as I want. The food is too good. My family cooks very well. My grandma hardly cooks now, but she makes it a point to cook for everybody during CNY. It’s the time of the year when you cannot be on a diet. After CNY, I watch my diet again,” she said.

Oh, what a difference two years makes.

When we spoke to Sheila Sim in our 2015 CNY issue in the Year of the Goat, she said that she dreads CNY because of pesky relatives’ probes about when she's getting married. Well, that won't be a problem this year, given that the 32-year-old actress-model recently announced her engagement.

Here’s what she said then: "I used to love Chinese New Year. But as I got older, I started to be afraid of CNY. I love family time when it’s real and authentic, with close family members. But CNY somehow feels a bit obligatory — you have to do certain things and see certain people, and it can get repetitive and fake. Also, at my age, it’s like, “Oh, when are you getting married and having kids?” It’s so stressful... last year I ran away for a holiday to China with my friend’s family — I just tagged along with them. I wanted to get out of here — I just didn’t want to deal with the 'When are you getting married?' questions... [When they ask me that,] I just keep quiet and deal with it, and give them the kind of [fake] ‘champagne laugh’, you know, how you laugh when you're socialising at chi-chi events, and say things like, ‘No lah, must wait for fate what. Fate is not here yet.’”

In 2014, in the Year of the Horse, we couldn’t think of anyone better than Elvin Ng to help us gallop into the year of the mighty stallion. The 33-year old actor had just released his new book called Our Epic Little Lives – An amusement park, a horse’s eye & little orange suns, and the dude admits he has a bit of an obsession with horses.

So we thought we’d get the newly-minted author to write the intro to our Chinese New Year cover story, so that we can sit back, relax and, um, not work like a horse.

And, here's what he wrote: "He sat there in front of the camera smiling, really smiling, warm lights flashing in his eyes, as shadows of paper horses were cast upon him and the wall behind; it felt surreal and romantic. He was brought right back to the time when he was writing a book, when he wrote about his love affair with a horse, a symbolic horse, how lovers and people first came to meet, how they (the little boy and his horse) leapt through windows of hope and promise of future which they drew for themselves, and that they believed in it. It was a new year, year of the horse, and how better to start it off than with the pen in his own hands, and instead of being written for, to write his own year. He’s a hopeless romantic, more hopeless, than romantic, and he believes this year to be a romantic and loving one; a good year for everyone."

To usher in Chinese New Year in the Year of the Snake in 2013, we not only got Zoe Tay to slip into a snakeskin trench, but also subjected the still-sexy mum-of-three to a totally random, potentially revealing CNY quiz.

In one of our questions, when we asked Zoe what she would do when she learns that a friend has given her kids a $100 ang pow each while she only gave a $20 ang pow for hers, she said, “I would give her kids a bigger ang pow next year. I keep a record of how much ang pow each person gives so I can return the favour the next year. My sis taught me to do this for my wedding. It’s actually very paiseh ’cos I have three kids so people will have to give three ang pows. That’s why I have to keep track. But to my close friends, I’ll say, “Who tell you to give birth to only one kid? (Laughs)”

In 2010, as the Year of the Tiger roared in, we got Li-Lin to pose sprawled on what appears to be a slain tiger in the field. And she looked like a satiated Jane who’s just defeated the beast, without Tarzan’s help, thank you very much. Someone was feline good that day. In fact, someone was feeling downright frisky. “Should I take off the bandeau top?” Li-lin purred. The sun was beating mercilessly upon her lithe body, protected only by nude-coloured lingerie. Our stylist quipped: “Make sure no passers-by sneak any pictures!” But the ballsy gal didn’t seem hot and bothered in the least. She was oblivious to the fact that we were steps away from a school, teeming with hot-blooded and curious teens. That’s just the kind of cool cat she is.

To set the record straight: Li-lin wasn’t even born in the year of the tiger. The 38-year-old is a rat. So why her for our Year of the Tiger Chinese New Year cover? The answer lies in erstwhile Project Runway champ Christian Siriano’s catchphrase: This girl is fierce.

Beneath the steely exterior, she’s a roost-ruling mother of two — protective of her younglings, just like the striped feline. Then there’s the generous bite of confidence she possesses. It takes a supreme amount of devil-may-care self-assurance to wander in public in nothing but hair curlers and a towel and own the damn scene. Purr-fect.

We got “rodent princess” Felicia Chin to don Minnie Mouse ears and say cheese to usher in the lunar new ear, we mean, year of the rat in 2008.

Felicia’s affinity with the cheese-loving critter doesn’t stop at her Chinese horoscope. “My friends say I look a bit like a mouse when I smile, because my face is very small.” To prove her point, she grinned widely. Yes, she’s rather mousy-looking indeed. But think adorable, cartoon mousy — like Remy the rat in Ratatouille and Minnie Mouse, rather than disease-carrying, sewer-dwelling vermin.

And guess what? She loves her furry, squeaky friends, and even looked after them when she worked as a host at the Singapore Zoo after her ‘A’ Levels. “I find mice and rats really quite cute,” she chirped. “When I was working at the zoo, I sometimes took care of them. We treat them just like hamsters.”

For our CNY Red Issue in 2007, we got Jeanette Aw talking about all things red. For example, what kind of male body makes her go red-hot with desire? Poised demurely on the edge of the couch in our photo studio, her dancer’s body ramrod straight, she mulled over our question for all of two seconds, and then intoned girlishly, “I’ve always hoped my guy will have a dancer’s body. Very toned and well-built with great abs — preferably a six-pack and good legs, heh heh. I think it’s nice if guys are well-built, because then, you’d feel a sense of security right? And, of course, he must be taller than me,” she added, eyes dancing mischievously, lips curving into a grin.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is as salacious and revealing as the actress got. That and the fact that she used to wear a red G-string. Dissolving into giggles, she chirped gleefully, “I used to have a red G-string when I was still dancing and had to wear a red costume.” All right, guys, enjoy your moment of luxuriating in that mental image — because the lithe actress with the manja voice is a homebody who’d rather chill at home with her family during the Lunar New Year holidays than purchase skimpy unmentionables and gallivant with her homies.

She also tries to wear red for Chinese New Year and — tsk tsk — doesn’t go New Year shopping. “I don’t have to buy new clothes for CNY. I’m fine wearing old stuff. I’m filming every day now and I don’t have the time. Plus, I hate jostling with the crowds. Of course, I try to avoid wearing black. And since red is my favourite colour, everything works out just fine!”