ABCs of CNY

Chinese New Year (CNY), Lunar New Year (calendar based on the moon, rather than the sun), Spring Festival, Tet, Imlek, ... these are just a few names for festivities to mark the beginning of the year according to the Lunar Calendar. Celebrated mostly by ethnic Chinese people around the world, it is considered a major holiday in much of Asia.

Since Chinese people can be found in almost every part of the world, some of our customs and traditions have taken on a local flavour. Singapore is no exception. So, this is my humble interpretation of what this holiday is to me. (This list is by no means exhaustive.)

A is for Abalone

This shellfish is a must for any Chinese New Year meal. Bought in cans and eaten in various ways, the price varies from year to year, according to the country of origin and size. As of 5 December 2015, the demand for abalone in Singapore increased overnight. Due to a ban on serving fresh-water raw fish, restaurants and eateries have now substituted raw fish for abalone in the traditional raw fish salad or 'lo hei' (see "L is for Lo Hei").

B is for Bak Kwa

Bak kwa 肉干 is barbequed pork slices. Available all year round, the demand and price soars about three weeks before the New Year. Pork is minced, seasoned with a secret marinade, dried, then barbecued by hand. The whole process takes a few days from slabs of meat to finished product.

C is for 春节 (pronounced 'Chun Jie')

C is also for Chinese New Year! Officially, Chinese New Year is known as 春节 or Spring Festival in Chinese as the first day of the lunar new year marks the beginning of Spring.

D is for 大吉大利 (pronounced 'da ji da li')

Loosely translated as 'good luck', this is one of the standard greetings during this festive season. Many Chinese homes will have this phrase pasted around the living room, much like a 'Merry Christmas' sign, as decor.

E is for Egg Rolls （蛋卷）

More commonly known as Kueh Belanda (literally 'Dutch cake' in Malay), this delicate, crispy roll is an absolute must in every home. It is made from eggs, flour, coconut milk and sugar. Painstakingly baked over a charcoal fire and quickly rolled by hand when hot, this deceptively light biscuit packs quite a few calories in one roll.

F is for Family

The New Year is a time for family from far and wide to come home for a reunion dinner on the eve of the new year. For the next few days, friends and relatives will visit one another to renew ties and stay in touch.

G is for 恭喜发财 (pronounced 'Gong Xi Fa Cai')

This is the standard greeting when you meet someone during the festive season, which lasts 15 days. For the non-Chinese speaking, a simple "Happy New Year" or 新年快乐 (pronounced 'xin nian kuai le') will do too.

H is for 'Hee Piaw‘ Soup 鱼鳔汤

In any Peranakan home, this soup is an absolute must for the reunion dinner. The name of the dish comes from its main ingredient, which is 鱼鳔 (pronounced 'yu bio') or the air bladder of the eel. Other ingredients in the soup are meat balls (made from minced pork, minced squid and crab meat), pig's stomach, sea cucumber, pork ribs and cabbage.

I is for I Love Chinese New Year!

J is for ’Juang Lo‘ 火锅

In a Hokkien (Fujian) home, the reunion dinner will be steamboat (sometimes knows as hot pot or 火锅 'huo guo'). Raw meat, seafood and vegetables will be prepared and served on plates around the table. In the middle of the table will be a boiling pot of soup. Each member of the family will take whatever food he likes from any of the array of raw food, dip it in the pot of soup to be cooked, then eat it piping hot. The fun is in the cooking and sharing of food around the table.

K is for Kueh-kueh

Kueh means 'cake' or any kind of pastry in Malay. Repeating the word makes it plural. Go to any home and you will find cakes, sweets, pastries, of a myriad display and flavour.

L is for ’Lo Hei‘ 捞起

Literally meaning 'toss up', this dish is uniquely Singaporean. It was created and popularised by local Cantonese chefs who owned a famous restaurant. Served only during the new year, it is a salad of sorts, with raw fish. Due to the ban on raw fresh water fish, the fish has now been replaced by abalone (see A is for Abalone).

M is for Mandarin Oranges

When visiting family and friends, mandarin oranges 柑 are a must. The minimum number is two. They must always be presented in even numbers. The recipient will return you the same number of oranges. If you are going to many homes, you will only need to leave home with two oranges and keep exchanging them at each home you visit. Recycling must have been an ancient Chinese custom.

N is for 年糕 (pronounced 'nian gao')

Literally translated as 'new year cake', this brown-coloured, round confection is served only during the new year. Eating it is supposed to guarantee you upward mobility in the days and months ahead (年年升高 pronounced 'nian nian sheng gao').

O is for ’Ong Lye‘ 黄梨

This practice is for the Hokkien family, if you are superstitious. In the Hokkien language, a pineapple is called 'ong lye'. This word is the same pronunciation for the word meaning 'wealth comes'. At the opening of a new business or before entering a new home, the Hokkien family will roll a pineapple from the front door into the premises for good luck. It is common to see paper pineapples hanging from the ceiling as decor.

P is for 盆菜 (pronounced 'pen cai')

This dish is traditional in Hong Kong. Originally, all the leftovers during the reunion dinner were placed in a large clay pot and simmered over a slow fire. This was the meal for the next few days of the new year. Today, it has become a specially made pot of expensive seafood items. Many hotels prepare this dish for families to order as takeaway for dinners at home.

Q is for Queues

Tis the season to queue for bak kwa 肉干. As the new year draws closer, queues in Chinatown outside the most famous store can go for kilometres round the block. Average waiting time is known to be eight hours. (See B is for Bak Kwa)

R is for Red Packets 红包

Red envelopes containing cash are given to grandparents, parents, elderly relatives, singles, and children. How much cash is in each envelope depends on who the recipient is, how close the relationship, and possibly how needy the recipient may be. Only one rule applies: total amount must always be in even numbers and absolutely not ending in 4 e.g. $4, $14, etc. The number 4 sounds like the word for death.

S is for Sugar

90% of what you eat during the new year contains this ingredient: cakes, cookies, soft drinks. If you are not careful, you will end up with a massive sugar overload before the first day of festivities is over.

T is for pineapple Tarts

This is a must for the new year, since pineapple has an auspicious meaning (see O is for Ong Lye). The basic recipe is pineapple jam wrapped in a flour and butter pastry. What the finished product looks like depends entirely on the creativity of the baker.

U is for Unusual Flavours

Singaporean palates are increasing hard to please. Each year, bakeries have to come up with unusual flavours for cookies. Some very local flavours this year include nasi lemak cookies (nasi lemak is a local dish of rice cooked in coconut milk, anchovies with peanuts, omelette, and a slice of cucumber), and dried shrimp floss cookies.



V is for Values

The festive season is for the older generation to pass down family and traditional values to the next generation. Values define a society. The stronger the family values, the stronger the society will be.

W is for Weight Gain

This is unavoidable, considering the copious amounts of food consumed in those few days. Unless you are very disciplined, it is very difficult not to gain some weight, even if it is only a few hundred grams.

X is for eXtra Kilos I need to shed

Ditto W is for Weight Gain above.

Y is for Young and Old

The festive season is for families to get together. Young and old enjoy each other's company. Family bonds are renewed and strengthened.

Z is for Zzz

After the festivities, we will all need lots of zzzz to make up for all the energy spent preparing, cooking, eating, washing, visiting friends and relatives, etc.

Here's wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Fat or VAT?

My Malaysian Chinese friend working in the UK wrote this on her Facebook:

"Customer confronts me today and repeats "fat fat fat where is the fat"... Took a few seconds to realize he was looking for the VAT counter and thankfully directed him there instead of to the queue for roast pork."

English as it is pronounced by different nationalities.

From a linguistics standpoint, the letters 'v' and 'f' are very similar in sound. Blow air through your upper teeth while bringing your lower lip up to the edge of your upper teeth. Then make the sound for 'v' or 'f'. It is so easy to get the two sounds mixed up.

In some words such as 'verb', if pronounced 'ferb', would make no sense whatsoever. The hearer might even wonder if the speaker wants a 'herb' instead.

However, in my friend's case, she almost sent the customer to the wrong counter! Apart from the different pronunciation of 'VAT', her Chinese mind (aka foodie mind), was thinking about any kind of food that contains high amounts of fat. Hence, roast pork.

Moral of the story: try not to process everything you hear through your own cultural mindset. Take a step back and try to understand the speaker's standpoint before offering an answer. When that fails, ask questions. At all costs, try to avoid misunderstanding. At all times, keep a big smile on your face and show interest. When words fail, the smile melts the coldest heart.

Have fun listening to and trying to understand different pronunciations of English!

Food descriptions

Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, has a new building that will be open soon. It is designed such that all the classrooms are round (instead of square or rectangular in shape), to facilitate discussion among students and their lecturers. In fact, the students will go online to read the lecture on their own time. Class time is meant solely for discussion of the week's lesson.

While the building has yet to have an official name (as of March 2015), it has been nicknamed the "dimsum baskets" building (pictured above). If you have ever seen pictures of steaming hot dimsum (点心) being served in bamboo baskets stacked up, you will get the idea.

When the design of The Esplanade (pictured on top right) performing arts venue was first released, many criticised it, saying it was ugly. However, very soon, the description that became most popular (and has stuck since) was "the durian". Today, bus and taxi drivers may not know "Esplanade", but if you tell them "The Durian", they know exactly where that is. (To the uninformed, durian (pictured on bottom right) is a fruit with a hard, spiky shell. It "smells like hell but tastes like heaven".)

This got me thinking about Singaporeans' obsession with food. We are known to be a nation of foodies. While eating breakfast, we are discussing what to eat for lunch and dinner, where to go for the best dish, how fresh the ingredients are, what special spices or herbs go into the dish, etc, etc. When we visit an aquarium, we do not simply admire the beauty of the fish in terms of colour or shape, but rather wonder how the fish would taste when cooked with some special combination of spices. Needless to say, we like our food!

In short, we Singaporeans tend to view quite a few things around us with "food-coloured" lenses. In the fast-paced life that we lead, we all need something to give us a break and brighten our day.

Happy eating!

Finish your food!

"Make sure you finish what is on your plate!" Every child around the world has heard this too many times from his mother. Apparently, we do not always listen.

Singapore schools have just started a campaign to ensure that school children do not waste food. They have to eat everything on their plate, which more or less forces children to take only what they can eat. More importantly, it teaches children not to waste food. Children are learning. They realise that not all children have enough to eat, so don't waste anything.

My mother always told me to eat up every grain of rice on my plate because each grain represents the sweat of a farmer somewhere. A book on life in China in the 1940s talks about a lady who eats up every grain of food on her plate because she experienced the hardship of farming in her younger days. She cannot bear to see anything being thrown away.

Food wastage in China is very real. "Operation Empty Plate" started to try to curb this bad habit. Is it working? I do not know. Only time will tell if cultural traits can be changed over a generation.

I have heard this statement many times:

There is enough food to feed everyone around the world, but why are some places having so much while others are starving?

Regardless of whether you are starving or in abundance, the point remains the same: do not waste food. My late grandmother used to say that wasting food is a sin. I don't know about that, but I agree that food should not be wasted. Eat what I can. Eat enough. Do not overeat. Everything in moderation. That's my philosophy in eating.

Culture takes generations to build. Culture will take generations to change. It begins with me.

Have fun learning a new culture!

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New Year - time for family togetherness

It's the second day of Chinese New Year! Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Why is this festival called Chinese New Year, when it's not limited to the Chinese community around the world? Vietnamese celebrate this festival too! They call it Tet. It is based on the Lunar calendar, so technically, it should be called Lunar New Year, not Chinese New Year.

Then the Chinese in China call it Spring Festival or 春节 because this is the time they welcome Spring, even though most times it is still winter and sometimes snowing in some parts of the country.

Regardless of what you call it, it's a time for the family to get together. On the eve of the Lunar New Year, the whole family gathers together from wherever they are living in the world. Special food is served, each dish symbolising a good wish for the new year. It is probably the one time of the year when the whole family gets to see each other and catch up with what has happened over the past year. For some, it is the first time meeting a new member of the family, whether by marriage or birth. In short, it is a heart-warming time for everyone.

In every culture, there seems to be at least one festival that brings the whole family together. In western countries, it is Christmas. For the Chinese and Vietnamese, it is the Lunar New Year. For those from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, it is the Buddhist New Year. We may all be culturally different, but one thing remains the same for the entire human race: family togetherness.

Whether you are celebrating the Lunar New Year or just starting another week, here's wishing you and your family a time of love and togetherness!

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Culture change - one person at a time

Wasting food vs. being a good host. A good Chinese host always provides an abundance of food, regardless of the number of guests. There must be leftovers to show that I can afford to feed you till you can't eat any more. Official banquets must be lavish. Tables must overflow with expensive and exotic food. Even if I'm eating alone or with 1 other person, I must order 2-3 dishes. We eat less than half of each dish, finish all our rice, and leave. The leftovers get thrown away. Normal practice in China.

Enter Operation Empty Plate. Here's what it is (taken from www.businessinsider.com):
"Beijing has launched a campaign (People's Daily) against waste and official gluttony. It began with "four dishes and a soup" and has progressed to "operation empty plate". "Operation empty plate" apparently was started by netizens earlier this month, Sina Weibo has promoted it and today it is on page one of People's Daily--人民日报-吃光盘中餐　今日不剩饭 “光盘行动”得到热烈响应. The People's Daily says that "operation empty plate" has been forwarded "50 million" times around the Internet (记者追踪“今天，你吃光盘中食物了吗” “光盘行动”被转发5000万次).

Whether it is really a grassroots movement or something coordinated by the Ministry of Propaganda with assistance from Sina, it is desperately needed here as the amount of food waste is quite shocking (South China Morning Post): Agricultural scientist Yuan Longping has called on Beijing to stop people wasting tens of thousands of tonnes of food each year by issuing fines.

Yuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering who is known as "the father of hybrid rice", said he had seen too many sumptuous banquets that ended up with many leftovers. The People's Daily cartoonists are quite talented and today they have a good one (Screenshot) depicting officials pigging out under a table in response to the campaign to stop waste and gluttony. Today's paper also has a commentary about special privileges and waste--人民日报-吃空饷背后的身份特权."

What good is a campaign if it's just on paper? Enter Mr Cheng Guangbiao, Chinese billionaire and philanthropist. He led by example (as shown in the picture above). "Better to take action than to say it 1000 times!" He may be a controversial figure in Chinese society, but, hey, at least he's doing something about not wasting food, rather than just paying lip-service! I label him a trend-setter.

Doing business in China is sometimes a mystery. You can read all the books (which is a really good thing to do), yet it never really prepares you for reality. Just make sure you are ready to eat good food and drink lots of hard liquor.

Have fun doing business in the world's #5 Fastest Growing Country - China!

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Eating some kinds of food bring wealth

Braised pork trotters Braised pork trotters. My favourite food. Actually, I like pork trotters cooked in different ways: boiled in soup, Filipino style crispy pata, German pork knuckles, etc.

Crispy Pata I had dinner with a Lao young man and two teenagers (one male and one female) from China. The teen from China observed the Lao man as he was eating braised pork trotters. Then he said, "In Guangzhou, every family must eat this dish for Chinese New Year. You know why? What does a pig do with his trotters? Dig around in the ground, right? So Cantonese (people from Guangzhou) believe that if you eat pork trotters, you will find wealth, like the pig digging in the mud." The Lao man stopped eating to shake the hand of the China teen. He was so pleased to know that someone had just wished him prosperity!

I learned something new that night. I am a Cantonese. My father's family is pure Cantonese. We never ate pork trotters during Chinese New Year. The most auspicious food served was the pancreas of the pig because in the Cantonese play of words, the word for pancreas sounds like 旺财顺利 or great wealth smoothly flowing in. Even then, only my dad, being the eldest son, got to eat it because it's a very small piece. So much for sharing of wealth.

Well, if you don't eat pork, then this dish is definitely not for you. It doesn't mean you won't be wealthy. The only definite thing about eating pork trotters is raising your bad cholesterol level and possibly getting a heart attack from all that fat consumed! Of course, that depends on which culture you come from.

Ultimately, just enjoy the cross-cultural experience. Learn a new language and be able to share the best of your culture with a new friend!

Here's to enjoying food of different cultures!

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Universal culture of eating

Singaporeans are foodies. We love to eat. We will drive miles and hours just to eat a good meal, then drive home after that. We will search out the best stall or restaurant for a particular dish. We may be eating breakfast, but we're already talking about what to eat for dinner, or tomorrow's meal. What's Singaporean culture? Food, if you ask me.

So, here's Ms Audra Ang, a Singaporean journalist, who covered current affairs in China. When her stint was over, she was asked what she got out of her few years in China. Instead of an editorial, she wrote a book on, what else? Food, of course! Chinese culture through the food of different locations.

I think food is a uniting factor across cultures and languages. As much as we may not want to admit, I've found that all my blog posts about food get the highest number of views! So, we may be so different culturally. We may not even speak the same language! But, we have one uniting factor - we all eat! Haha!

I'm no expert on food, even though I do enjoy a good meal and like to cook occasionally. But, if you want to visit China or do business there, I can offer you a book or two for that. Learn some Mandarin today. Open the door to China.

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