Unlike the Western culture how the New Year is celebrated on...the New Year's eve and day on the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year is usually celebrated between mid-January to the end of February. The Chinese separates the year by the patterns of the moon, hence Chinese New Year is according to the Lunar calendar. This year (2014), Chinese New Year is celebrated on January 31st; adn 2014 is the year of the Horse. How the animals come in play came from an old legend, which I may talk about in another time.
So lucky for me, and quite a good timing actually, this week we're going to have Chinese New Year! Actually, as I am typing this blog right now, it is already Chinese New Year. Today was such a busy busy busyyyyyy day! My mother and I had to go grocery shopping at the Asian market. And guess what, it was jam PACKED! Everyone was doing their last minute shopping. It's like the eastern equivalent to Christmas Eve shopping or during Black during. Yeah, just that crazy. Andddd here are some typical food items I saw might interest you!
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| Honey Roasted Pork 叉烧 |
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| Roasted Duck 烤鸭 |
This is actually a very typical way of displaying food in the Asian market in Asia as well. The meat is displayed, and the consumer pick and choose which one(s) they want. Well, we didn't get either at the market becausseeeeee my mommy already bought the roasted duck the day before :). Good job mommy! Today we are here to get some vegetables, noodles, and to stock up on some sauces!
Thank goodness for JanTerm class I'm taking or else I would've never finished making these dumplings! Practice makes perfect! Today's dumplings were a little different than the ones we made in class. The stuffing we made included: nappa cabbage, ground pork, salt, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and diced ginger; 1/3 being ground pork and the other 2/3 being veggies. (My mom likes to make everything healthier.) Hahah look at me makin' those dumplings! I sat there for almost 3 hours! Netflix was ma pal!
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| Working super hard! |
I'm not going to show you all the dishes that we had but here are some of the dishes that have a significant meaning on Chinese New Year (or Chinese food culture in general haha). This dish (below) is called 捞生 (lao sheng); before the big meal for Chinese New Year, everyone would use their chopsticks and together as a group we would mix everything on this plate together while cheering. This is to bring good luck and sometimes we say wish upon good things (for others) during this time.
This is no ordinary chicken! This dish is called 白切鸡 (bai qie ji); and it is Cantonese styled. It looks simple, quite plain actually, and you may wonder why is such an easy dish made on such a celebrated festival? Well, meat in China symbolizes wealth. So due to the simplicity of this chicken, people thought that even if you're limited, you (or your family) can still be able to afford a chicken on the table. This is a mark of growth (from the backfire of the Great Leap Forward). So this is still a tradition now and this dish actually asks for a lot of 功夫 (techniques). It was my mom's first time making it, not too bad mommy! Proud of you :)!
There is a Chinese saying and it goes like this, 年年有余. That translates to every year there are remains/leftovers. Every year there is so much abundance that you have remains/leftovers. Fish 鱼 is a homophone for 余. Traditionally, there is always at least one dish that is of fish to signify this saying. However, since we didn't have fish this time....and one of our family's friend got us some lobsters....soooo...we kinda' exchanged it. So what is usually a plate of steamed fish is now a lobster sashimi for us! And it was delish! :D
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| HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! |
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| Of course, you can't have a Chinese celebration without alcohol ;). |
That is all folks! This was how I spent my 2014 Chinese New Year! I was definitely the most I've ever put into making a meal for Chinese New Year and it definitely made the food soooo much better! After dinner, we played some games, in this case charades and the loser had to eat a sushi with wasabi packed inside! Ahh I've had only 2, anddddd I was the lucky one who only had to eat 2 muahahah. At the end of the night, of course we received our little red pockets! :)
I hope you enjoyed reading a little snippet of my life and how my family and I celebrated Chinese New Year. I wish everyone good health and may all your wishes come true! Thank you for reading and have a lovely Friday tomorrow!
Evann
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