FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Feasting for the Year of the Rabbit

Jenny Lee browses the aisles at T&T Osaka.

Arlene Kroeker photo

‘When I moved to Richmond, there was nowhere to buy anything for Chinese New Year,” says my friend Jenny Lee. “So much has changed.”

We are at T&T’s Osaka Supermarket in Yaohan Centre surveying all that is red and gold. She points to a flower stand in the mall. “In Hong Kong, two or three days before New Year’s, flower markets show up everywhere,” she says. “It’s one of the exciting moments building towards the holiday.”

Chinese New Year is also about spring, represented by cherry blossoms, although, Jenny tells me, pussy willows and bamboo have become acceptable representations in the past decade. Small orange trees are popular, because their Chinese name means fortune.

Red banners with Chinese letters hang in T&T’s windows and doorways. Jenny tells me these are like poems that extend wishes of prosperity and health. When Jenny was a child, she and her siblings played with firecrackers, but here in Canada it is faux firecrackers that hang beside the banners.

Inside, stacks of New Year’s cakes fill the tables. A glutinous savoury cake is made with grated daikon, rice flour, and Chinese sausage. The sweet cake is made with sticky rice flour and brown sugar. These cakes are sliced and pan-fried before being served to guests at New Year’s. Jenny adds a whisked egg to the sweet cake before serving.

We walk past vegetables and food items I’m unfamiliar with. Lotus root (“that goes in Buddha’s Feast”), bamboo shoots (“slice those thin”), dried persimmon (“wash off the icing sugar before you eat it”), dry lotus seed (“boil with red dates to make tea for New Year’s”), preserved duck eggs (“those go with congee”), dried bean curd sheet (“wash and soak in hot water until it melts, then add egg and sugar for a dessert”), zedoary powder (“use with soy sauce to marinate chicken for one hour, then bake”).

“Most of these items used to be available only in herbal stores,” says Jenny.

We see stacks of butane gas for hot pot—popular for family gatherings, fungus gift baskets, frozen Australian green abalone ($99.99 lb), and boxed trays of pastries. “At home,” Jenny tells me, “I bring out my special New Year’s tray and fill it with fancy pastries. We offer the tray, along with the pan-fried rice cakes, to our guests.” Jenny says that her mother-in-law used to spend weeks make everything, including more than 50 cakes, all different types, and all steamed, to give to relatives.

rom Taiwan and apple pears from Korea which are handed out freely to friends and family during the holiday. These are 1,000-year-old traditions.

How does Jenny celebrate Chinese New Year? On New Year’s Eve the extended family gathers for dinner at her sister-in-law’s home (her sister-in-law is a great cook, says Jenny).

The New Year’s Eve dinner includes many dishes, all with a name that sound like good luck, health, or prosperity. (“It doesn’t mean it tastes good, it’s all about the play on words,” says Jenny.) Pork’s tongue, for example, in Cantonese is ya lay and translates to “have money” and black moss sounds like “become prosperous.”

Before they sit down to dinner, the aunties bring out their bags of red envelopes filled with crisp new bills and the unmarried nieces and nephews start dancing around, yelling “thank you,” Jenny tells me. “No one knows who is giving what.” Jenny organizes the envelopes for her mother, who gives out 50 envelopes. (The bills can range from $5 to $100. TD Bank ran out of new bills the week prior to New Year.)

On New Year’s Day, Jenny’s son, daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters visit and each serve her tea and wish her Gung Hay Fat Choy, basically saying “I wish you a fortune.” In return, she hands each one a red envelope. The old way, she says, was to kneel to serve the tea—a display of respect for the parents.

Many traditions have changed over the years, mostly because of lack of time. In Asia, everyone gets 10 days off, some a full two weeks. In Canada, no one gets a day off to celebrate, so most family reunions occur on a weekend or evenings.

Henry is the youngest in his family. His family’s tradition, from the Fujian province, means that he and Jenny will visit the next oldest sibling on New Year’s Day. The next day, they both visit the next oldest, and so on until they all visit the parents together. However, on the third day, no one pays anyone a visit. If you do, you will quarrel the rest of the year.

New clothes—bright colours, no black or white—and a clean house are tradition, but Jenny believes the tradition stems from the days when people could only afford to buy clothes once a year. Jenny doesn’t buy new clothes for New Year’s. She has two suits that she wears only at New Year’s. And she doesn’t buy the banners or firecrackers. Over the years, she has become “modernized.”

“What it’s really all about,” says Jenny, “is getting the family together at least once during the year.”

Arlene Kroeker writes about food every Thursday. She may be reached at akroeker@aol.com.