Monday, February 19, 2007

Chinese New Year Celebrations



Every year, we usually gather at one relative's house to celebrate Chinese New Year. With lots of people around, it's a noisy affair and totally different from how I remember Chinese New Year to be when I was young. Previously we used to visit each of my aunties and uncles from house to house, a tedious affair for us since my dad was one of the youngest out of a family of thirteen children. It was customary that the younger members visit the older ones hence those visits used to be from one end of the town to the other.


Since it was such a tedious affair, the family came up with this gathering instead. Initially only my uncles or my father will host this affair and it became quite taxing for everyone hence now my aunt has volunteered to host this yearly event at her house.


There's always lots of yummy food and these are only a small fraction of what we ate. This year we had home made Yee Sang which was yummy since it had lots of pomelo which is always my favourite. Then there's vegetarian Loh Hon Chai, an essential for the new year as some people are vegetarian on the first day of the lunar new year. For my family, a must is the Hakka Char Yoke since my father's family is Hakka.


For desserts, my aunt is an expert jelly maker. She makes all these interesting shapes and sizes in various colours like this colourful fish.



There's also auspicious signs on the jellies. This one I believe shows the prosperity sign (fook). Not too sure since my chinese is horrendous.


Another must have is the lion dance. Same troupe from last year (if some of you remember) but this year, we even had a visit from the Prosperity God (Choy San) who was distributing mandarin oranges to all. It was fun and luckily this year was slightly cooler with the earlier downpour in the morning.

Gong Xi Fa Cai to all of you and do share all your stories on how you celebrated the New Year. Am sure it was a fun time with lots of eating, gambling and drinking.

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7 comments:

Lyrical Lemongrass said...

Yee sang looks yummy. That's the kind of yee sang I'm craving - those with lots of natural ingredients.

boo_licious said...

lyrical lemongrass - aww, now I feel like eating some more. I love yee sang as I eat it just like a salad.

flymeng - Gong Xi Fa Cai! Such good memories and I'm glad you got to eat chai again.

Lyrical Lemongrass said...

boo_licious: yeah, yee sang is yummy and I can never resist it. I wish I could get homemade yee sang though, but I guess the only way I'm gonna get it is if I make it myself!

boo_licious said...

lyrical lemongrass - you can buy the base stuff and then add all sorts of ingredients. We love to add alfafa sprouts, tastes so yummy and if no pok pok chui crackers, add cornflakes like my relatives do in Canada.

an9ie said...

Happy New Year! Wow, your aunt's jellies are very impressive and pretty! We had Yee Sang as well, our own salad mix (three colours of capsicum, celery, shredded carrot, smoked salmon, chives and coriander) with shop-bought stuff but it still tasted good :)

demuredamsel said...

Gong Xi Fa Chai =)
I simply love your blog!
I miss malaysian foods so badly :(

boo_licious said...

an9ie - Gong Xi Fa Cai! Yum, yr yee sang sounds good too.

demuredamsel - Gong Xi Fa Cai! Aww, sorry to hear that. Hope this means you'll be visiting home soon.

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