Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
It was the Dragon Boat Festival again, which is also known as the Duanwu Festival. This year it fell on the 18th June 2018 which is the 5th day of the 5th month of the traditional lunar calendar.
As some of you may remember, I help run Lichfield Mandarin Club which started six years ago and we often do arts and crafts with the children, especially with themes based on Chinese festivals. So this school term, one of the mummies Ailin organized some party games for the children.
For English weddings, the bride and groom typically have a list of wedding gifts but for Chinese, we are more practical. All we want is money, partially to pay for the wedding costs and partially to pay your mother-in-law!
Ever since I moved to the UK for work, I have found it hard to keep up or observe the proper Chinese New Year traditions my mum used to teach me. I think part of it is because I have forgotten how it was as I have not been back to Singapore for 8 years during this festive period and another part of it is because I want to be a modern woman who doesn’t need to follow the superstitious rules.
Yesterday we were celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival, which is also known as the Duanwu Festival, and falls on the 9th June 2016. It occurs on the 5th day of the 5th month of the traditional lunar calendar. The festival involves eating dumplings (zongzi – sticky rice) and racing dragon boats! If you want to know how the dumplings look like, check out my post I wrote two years ago.
As some of you might remember that I help run Lichfield Mandarin Club which started four years ago and I like to involve arts and crafts with the children especially Chinese festival. So this school half term, I organized a Dragon Boat festival.
Want to learn simple Chinese numbers using LEGO? Then read on and see how we incorporate LEGO into our daily life! Many of my readers will know that I love to use crafts to teach my children or our Lichfield Mandarin Club’s children in Chinese language. For example, we used ang pow (red packets) to make a Chinese character sheep, used old ang pow to write Chinese character Monkey, practised writing Chinese New Year words on balloons, 3D paper cutting Spring character and many more.
Although living in the UK can be a lot of fun, sometimes the fusty old British interior design scheme can leave a little to be desired. So for anyone who’s looking to update their interiors with a few Chinese themes, here are some ideas.
Last year when I went back to Singapore to visit, I bought a few mooncake moulds and now it is the time of the year to make it! As I don’t have the main ingredients to make mooncake, I decided to make piglets instead. For my previous mooncake bakes, do check out my swiss roll snow skin mooncake and colourful snow skin mooncake.
Piglet or 豬仔餅 has always been my favourite snack to eat during the mooncake festival. But my mum always refused to buy them for me as they are not particularly healthy and they are made from leftover pastry for the mooncake. Now I can totally understand what she meant!
We all heard something about Feng Shui – the traditional Chinese philosophy that helps people take care of their life better. It works on many levels in our life, and it works on the premise that what is closest to you has the most impact on your physical and emotional health. And what can be closer to you than your clothing?
Today I am going to share some Feng Shui tips for your wardrobe. To use it or not – it is all up to you, but nothing will change if you won’t make an impact. So do your choices and let’s get to those tips right away.
The Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival is also known as Zhong Yuan Jie. In Chinese culture (especially Asian countries), the Chinese Lunar seventh month calendar is regarded as the Ghost Month in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, release from the lower realm (Buddhist- the wheel of Samsara) for the whole month. During this month, there will be a grand scale of praying and celebration which will have Getai (singing in Hokkien or Teochew) and dinner with bidding for lucky things on such a night.
This year Dragon Boat Festival falls on this coming Monday 2 June 2014 which is today! There are a few versions of how the history came about. For what I learnt at school it is about Qu Yuan. He was a poet and minister (c. 340–278 BC) of the ancient state of Chu. To cut the long story short, he committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River. The local people raced out to save him but was unable to do so. So they dropped balls of sticky rice (dumpling) into the river so that the fish would eat them instead of Qu Yuan’s body.
If you would like to find watch the Dragon Boat race, do pop by to Brindleyplace Dragonboat Festival. They are celebrating the 15th anniversary this year by setting an ambitious fund-raising target of £50,000 which will be donated to local charity HelpHarryHelpOthers. The race will take place on 28th June 2014, with 20 teams competing in a series of heats in traditional Chinese longboats from Pitcher and Piano, The Water’s Edge in Brindleyplace, to the winning post at The NIA.
Growing up in Singapore I always associated dumplings with the festival as my grandma, my mum and aunties were always gathered around and wrapping them for the festival. But as time passed, dumplings became a very common snack in Singapore which you can get throughout the year.
Dumpling is made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo leaves. The fillings could be: plain, chestnuts, chicken, Chinese sausage, pork, cooked peanuts, salted egg yolk etc.
What is Confinement?
It is a postnatal practice aimed at helping a new mum recover from pregnancy, labour and birth. It also means the new mum and baby are confined at home. For Chinese, the period lasts for a whole month, which will coincide with baby’s first month. During this time, the new mums have a lot of taboos and restrictions.
In many countries like the USA, they celebrate baby shower before the baby is born. As for Chinese custom, this is traditionally celebrated one month after the baby is born. This also coincides with the end of the new mum’s confinement period. During the confinement period, visiting the new mum and baby is not advisable. The full month is the day where both mother and baby are introduced to the extended relatives and friends.
It is a big celebration in Singapore but when I had my first child, Mr K, we lived in London with no relatives close by and friends to invite. Before the party, the baby undergoes the hair ritual. So we had a small hair cutting ritual for Mr K. In this photo, my mum held Mr K while I cut a bit of his hair to keep inside an ang pow (red packet).
You might be wondering what is a Bridal Door Game? This is a game played when the groom picks up his bride on the day of the wedding. The bridesmaids will give the groom and his group of ‘brothers’ (best men) a list of tasks/games to do before the groom is allowed to fetch his bride. But they have to pass all the tasks/games!
According to my uncle, this game was not commonly played during his time for his dialect (Teochew or Hokkien). It is more commonly played for Cantonese. Hence he didn’t have any photos to share with me this week.
Nowadays, it is common regardless of the bride and groom’s dialect. I was my sister’s maid of honour but did not fly back to Singapore until one week before the wedding. So her group of bridesmaids had already written a list of tasks/games to play and prepare the items to buy.
Hope you’ve enjoyed my Chinese Wedding series so far where I have covered gifts, tea ceremony, hair combing ceremony and Yue Lao. This week, I am writing about ‘small uncle’ or in English tradition this is called a Page Boy. In a Chinese Wedding, our ‘small uncle’ have a very important role than just walk together with the bride.
Who can be Small Uncle?
Each bride and groom will have one boy each that is closely related to the family. For my sister’s wedding, they decided to ask my son to be their page boy.
Their first task of the wedding day:
On the wedding day, when the groom arrives at the bride’s house, he is not allowed to open his car door but has to wait for the small uncle to open it for him. The small uncle opens the door and brings a pair of oranges to welcome the groom. In return, the groom would give him ang pow (red packet).
This photo shown the bride’s small uncle opening the door for the groom.
Following my recent theme on Chinese traditions, I decided to write about Yue Lao who is the god of marriage. Without him, there wouldn’t be any wedding. According to legend, Yue Lao appeared as an old man under the moon. He is like cupid but instead of holding a bow and arrow, he is holding a red string. If he ties the red string onto the couple, they will fall in love and get married.
In the traditional Chinese wedding custom, the bride and bridegroom walks together holding a length of red cloth with a big red ribbon in the middle. This is symbolism of their match by Yue Lao. I don’t think this has been commonly practised in Singapore.
