Chinese New Year Eve – Chu Xi

Chinese New Year Eve night is named as “除夕”, “Chu Xi” in Mandarin or some called it “年三十晚”. It’s last day of the year in the lunar calendar.  In some years, there will be only “年二十九晚”as in the 12^th month of the Lunar calendar of some years will only have 29 days instead of 30 days. 

In Chinese culture, people will busy preparing to welcome Lunar New Year. After the “Re-union Dinner”, where all the family members will have dinner together, people will start to clean their house and tidy up things as it is a taboo to sweep floor on the first day of Chinese New Year.

According to Chinese culture, people will normally stay awake for the whole night or not sleep during the CNY Eve night. This is called “守岁”, “Shou Sui” in Mandarin. There are different stories behind the meaning for “守岁”. One of saying is “守岁” is good for the elderly at home so that will have a longevity life for the elderly.

On the Chinese New Year Eve night, my mother will be busy preparing for the prayers to pray for good luck, prosperity and peace of the family members. It is called “接财神”, “Jie Cai Shen” in Mandarin. My siblings will start to light the firecrackers and fireworks after the prayers. It is so loud and fun! Yes! That is the long waiting once a year atmosphere for Chinese New Year! We can continue to hear the loud bang from the fireworks and firecrackers throughout the whole night of CNY Eve.

My parent will start to give out red packets or angpows called “压岁钱”,“Ya Shui Qian” to us, to bless us for this new year with peaceful, safety and prosperity throughout the whole year round. Thank you my dearest Mummy and Papa!!

Dragon Dance during Chinese New Year 2011

On last Sunday, I went to nearby market to buy my breakfast and I saw there is performance of Dragon dance. I felt very excited as it is very rare to have dragon dance here.  Maybe it is to celebrate Chinese New Year. Oh, I really felt so happy and excited!

Dragons are legendary animals and Chinese culture believes that it will bring good luck, power, wisdom and long life. I felt so luck and so glad as able to see the performance. Dragon dance, 舞龙 (wu loong in Mandarin) is a kind of Chinese traditional performance, more commonly seen during festive season like Chinese New Year or some celebration in the temples. 

Dragon dance required team spirit as they need to coordinate so well for the performance to intimidate the movements of dragons. The challenging part is those movements need to coordinate well with the drum beat from another group of team members. Can you imagine how long they have been training for this performance? I guess it take lots of hard works. The hard works pay off, the performance is so great and successful! Too bad as my phone battery is running low, I am just able to record down part of the performance and I am here to share this with the world. Hope you enjoy watching it too.

Indeed, in real life, we need lots of team spirit in order to achieve a better task. One can do a good job but a team can accomplish a better mission!

Valentines Day Dinner

We had deferred our Valentines Day’s dinner to yesterday night. I had a warm, romantic and full dinner. I even feel full by the time I went to bed. We went to have seafood. To my surprise, the Valentines Package still available for serving even after the actual Valentines Day. Maybe that is true that Valentines Day is just another special event or business opportunities to boost up their sales. 

I am wondering how many people do really understand the actual meaning behind the Valentines Day celebration. So ashamed to confess that I didn’t either know the real meaning of it.
However, I see it as another good chance to spend time together with our love ones, be it your spouse, lover, family or friends. People in the city is mostly very busy with works all the time. So it is really a good idea to have some special event to remind them to spend time with those he precious of.

Anyway, it is good that we still can enjoy the Valentines Package.
As appetizer, there is soup, seafood chowder. It tasted good, but quite fattening as I believe it contains lots of butter and cream. That is why the soup is thick and nice. 

Next on the menu is our main course, which is seafood platter. As you can see, there are variety of seafood, prawns, mussels, squids, salmons with fried rice and coleslaw. The taste is good and the serving is big. We took close to an hour to complete the full course of meal. 

The dessert is hot fudge cake with ice-dream. The cake is really hot, as it steaming in the middle. This is the favorite of my dear, he enjoyed it so much! Feel sweet inside and outside.

I enjoyed a great dinner. Thank you my dear!

Departmental Lunch for CNY

Today, we have a departmental lunch at one of the Chinese restaurant. It is already 16th day of the Chinese New Year and it will consider as end of Chinese New Year celebration. However, we are surprise to see there is still serving Yu Sheng. And of course "Yu Sheng" is one of the dishes that we ordered. Here, I will should you the delicious "Yu Sheng" from the restaurant. It is definitely look better than that I DIY at home.

 
The "after Yu Sheng tossing effect" as I advise earlier, you can see there are some "Yu Shang" spilled over the table. 

Maybe it is the purpose, as we believe "Yu Shang" means surplus. So, maybe surplus and spilt over the table. This "Yu Sheng" is serving with raw fish slices as it’s named. It taste a bit fishy, hmm... but it is part of the taste of a real "Yu Sheng".

The second dish is my favourite, it is shark fin soup. Hmm, it taste so good even without vinegar and the taste is totally different when I added in vinegar. Both taste as good to me.

I saw there is a little device on the table as follow. I am not sure whether this device is working or not as one of my colleague just pressed the call button and so coincident that there is a waitress walk pass us. But it is something new and special to share here

Tossing 鱼生 “Yu Sheng” during Chinese New Year on 人日 “Ren Re”

The Seventh day of Chinese New Year (正月初七) is named as 人日 “Ren Ri” or “Ren Re” (in Mandarin) or “Yan Yat” (in Cantonese). Direct translation to English means “Human Day”. According to the elderly, this is the birthday of all the humans as they believe human beings are created on “Ren Ri” or “Ren Re”. Normally the Chinese in Singaporean and Malaysian will toss and eat (鱼生) “Yu Sheng" (in Mandarin) or “Yu Shang” (in Cantonese) on “Ren Ri” (人日) to celebrate the birthday of all the human.  

Yu Sheng before tossing, the bottom left in brown is jelly fish

“Yu Sheng” is also known as “Lo Hei” (捞起), in Cantonese means getting prosperity and rich. Direct translation of “Yu” (鱼) is fish. It has the same pronunciation as (余), meaning “abundance” or “surplus”. There are many definitions for “Shang" (生) and one of it is “live” or “getting rich and prosperity”.Thus, “Yu Sheng" (鱼生) is a dish for CNY which symbolize abundance, prosperity and good luck and usually served as appetizer. It can be consumed at any of the first to fifteenth of Chinese New Year days. Nowadays, some people have even start to consume it during the re-union dinner on Chinese New Year Eve.

Colorful ingredients, look nice and taste good

Some people also named “Yu Sheng” 鱼生as “Seven-color Yu Sheng" (七彩鱼生) due to the nature of its colorful ingredients. The normal ingredients consist of papaya slice, red ginger slice, white ginger slice, golden lemon slice, cucumber slice, grinded ground nuts, grinded sesame seed, dry lime slice, winter melon slice, carrot slice, fried crackers and so forth. These ingredients may be varies and in different colour.  The most important ingredient, I would think is the plum sauce and the fresh fish slice. Some people will also add in seasoned jellyfish. “Yu Sheng” can be found in most of the Chinese Restaurant and nowadays there are pre-packed “Yu Sheng” ingredients which are available in most of the supermarkets in Singapore and Malaysia.  

Pre-packed Yu Sheng bought from supermarket

I personally name it as “Chinese New Year Salad” in my home as it consist lots of vegetables. This is one of my favorite dishes during CNY. Have you start to feel hungry now? I have made this “Yu Sheng” from the pre-packed ingredients and add in fresh carrot slices and seasoned jelly fish but without fresh fish slice.

I use lots of fresh carrot and that is why i named it as "salad"

There are certain steps to follow before can start to consume this colorful and meaning dish. In my family, all the family members need to stand up, holding a pair of chopsticks and need to say out loud for lots of “auspicious wishes” while tossing the “Yu Sheng”. There are also techniques which tossing, it is good to tossing as high as possible as the height reflects the growth of fortunes and prosperity of the diners. Remember to use the biggest place in your house to serve the “Yu Sheng” it  has a very high chance for diners to toss the food out of the plate it is too small. It will be a waste right?

I use a tray so that have a bigger space to toss the Yu Sheng

Have you tried to “Lo Hei” already? If not, please try it next time, it is a great and fun experience. For those who has experience it, I hope this will bring back your memory of the happy moments which tossing “Yu Sheng” with your family and friends. I am so looking forward for the coming Chinese New Year 2012 to toss “Yu Sheng” again!