Thursday, January 29, 2009
Hi all, Happy Chinese Niu Year! In case you are unfamiliar with the word 'niu', it means cow in english. Since it is the year of the ox, hence this greeting is used. An ox represents patience, strength and determindness. Hope that this year will be a good year for the economy and that everyone will work together to help us recover from this recession. Have you also noticed something else that is different from usual? Yes, it is the colour of this particular post! I have posted it in red, in conjunction with Chinese New Year, as the colour red is considered auspicious by many.
Chinese New Year starts on the 1st day of the 1st month of the chinese calender and ends on the 15th. Curious how this season of joy and visiting all began, then i shall not keep you in the dark. It all startedwith the fight against a mythical beast called the Nian or "Year" in Chinese. Nian would come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, the villagers would put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It was believed that after the Nian ate the food they prepared, it wouldn’t attack any more people. One time, people saw that the Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red. Hence, every time when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, the Nian never came to the village again.
So now you know that this holiday came from tales and legends, amazing, right? Let us go into depth about the New Year Goodies that we commonly eat during this time of the year. First of all, the most popular one-pineapple tarts! This mini, cute looking tibitsare small, bite-size pastries filled with or topped with pineapple jam. The pastry consists of a large proportion of butter and egg yolk, besides using cornstarch, giving it a rich, buttery, tender and melt-in-the-mouth texture. The pineapple jam is usually made by slowly reducing and caramelizing grated fresh pineapple that has been mixed with sugar and spices - usually cinnamon, star anise and cloves. The filling can be 'seated' neatly on the tart, or stuffed into the baked roll.
Next, is the much loved tibit-love letters. They are crunchy, flakey and truly delicious! From what i hear, these 'letters' were derived from the past. Long ago, when a lover wanted to send his or her letter to the other party, he or she would roll it up first before sending it over, that was how love letters came about.
Now, i will show you my family's decoration for the Chinese New Year celebrations. It is original, creative and innovative.
Lining the cushions and tissue box with cushion covers and a tissue box cover is plain yet unique
I got this design from our class's design of an ox. However, it has been scaled down to size and is 2-sided, with one side made of red packet paper and the other side made of shiny red paper.
Just like any other basket of mandrin oranges, but with the red packet upside down. The word 'fu' means luck, and placing it the opposite way shows that luck has arrived(fu dao)into the oranges.
This design was thought of by my brother and i, is it unique and creative? The left-most word, fu, means luck and the centre word, ji, means luck too. The number 8 in chinese is 'ba', which sounds like 'fa', meaning earning money and getting rich.
This practice of pasting a red packet on our doors is done every year without fail, bringing prosperity and luck into our rooms.
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