Chinese Food / The Kitchen God / Festivities

Chinese Food / The Kitchen God / Festivities

The Lunar New Year falls on the first day of the first moon (lunar month), and is Feb. 7 this time around. In old Canton (Guangzhou) in Southern China (circa 1936), its celebration was a month-long affair.

Fifteen days before the New Year, every store holds the last official banquet of the year. The presiding boss may start by offering a chicken leg to an employee, who often would burst into tears, not of gratitude, but of self-pity. This is the notorious "heartless chicken" - a kiss of death, Chinese style - signaling dismissal.

A week before the New Year, male family members bid farewell to the Kitchen God, who makes a week-long annual report to the Jade Emperor in Heaven. Sweet, sticky food, especially the syrupy malt sugar, is offered to his image in the kitchen to please him, but also to glue his mouth shut. This way he would not be able to say anything bad to bring disaster on the household. The Northern Chinese are more forthright: They smear a dollop of malt sugar over his lips.

New Year goodies must be prepared in advance. The mother of the household steams huge puddings (go) that are two inches thick and more than a foot in diameter. White Radish Pudding - with julienned radishes, rice flour, air-cured pork, dried shrimp, scallions and white pepper - is starchy yet chewy with a subtle astringency. Purple Taro Pudding is substantial with taro in place of turnips. Translucent Water Chestnut Pudding is sweet and yielding yet with spots of crunchiness through crushed water chestnuts. New Year's Pudding (nin go; nian gao in Mandarin) is sticky with glutinous rice flour and brown with unrefined sugar. (The Cantonese are surprised to learn that Northern New Year's pudding can be snow-white in color, and can be either savory or sweet.)

The children of the house may even be allowed into the kitchen to watch mother making deep-fried food such as sesame-coated round dumplings called jin dui - some small and hollow, but some as large as a fist or even a grapefruit - filled with sugared puffed glutinous rice and crushed peanuts. Other fried favorites are Crunchy Smiling Faces, a sesame-coated, sweetened dough ball cracked on one side and odd-shaped knick-knacks, some made from tiny slivers of flavored, colored dough, some from sweet potato slices and some from jumbles of stuck-together shredded taro. Deep-fried crescents are favored because they look like Chinese gold ingots; mother makes gok jai ("little crescents" ) stuffed with chopped peanuts, sesame and sugar, and yau gok ("oil crescents"), with a skin of glutinous rice flour and sweet bean paste stuffing.

Everybody returns home for the New Year's Eve family feast, most noted for the seasonable use of air-dried pork, air-dried duck, Chinese sausage, Chinese duck-liver sausage, all together steamed with starchy arrowhead roots and cut into slices.

The sound of firecrackers is heard everywhere on New Year's Day. Auspicious messages on red paper are pasted at home, including a four-foot long couplet of good wishes in flowing calligraphy on the two sides of the front door. "New spring with great luck" and "spirited as the dragon and the horse" appear on the wall, and on the rice urn, "ever full." Above the center of the door a sign reading "bliss" is pasted upside down. New pictures of the Door Gods and the Kitchen God replaces the old ones. Proper homage is paid to departed ancestors, to welcome the return of the Kitchen God and to elders in the family. New Year's dinner in Canton is a vegetarian meal, featuring Lohan Jai, using 10 or more ingredients. Northerners consume steamed or pan-fried crescents filled with vegetable and meat.

The second day of the first lunar month is the formal "opening" day of the new year. Martial-art institutes perform lion dances in the street. Shops hang prizes in red envelopes bound together with green lettuce leaves high on the second floor, each above a huge string of large, red, live firecrackers. The lion dancers stand on each other's shoulders so that the lion can bite off the prize and spit out the lettuce to the throbbing beat of the drum.

Street peddlers sell clams (hin). Everybody says gung hee fat choy ("congratulations for striking it rich") or just gung hee ("congratulations") to each other, and children get lai see, pocket money in tiny red envelopes from married adults. Visitors are offered candied lotus seeds, candied lotus root slices, dried melon seeds in the shell, tangerines, knick-knacks and tea. The puddings are sliced and pan fried to add a light brown crust and served. Store owners give a feast to workers at the shop or in restaurants. Special dishes are presented, for their imaginative good-wish names as much as taste. Representative is Strike it Rich and Good Sales (Fat Choy Ho See, actually Hair Vegetable [Fat Choy] Braised with Dried Oysters [Ho See]), earthy and rich without being fattening, it goes well with rice and is just right for the cold winter outside. Opera houses offer popular favorites with happy endings, such as The Grand Investiture of the Premier of Six Countries.

The economy returns to normal when shops open again on the seventh day of the new year, called People's Day. But festivities continue until the 15th night, with the consumption of boiled brown-sugar stuffed sweet dumplings in ginger sugar water.

Like no other festival, the Lunar New Year celebrations reveal the psyche of the Chinese people, who long for, but do not really expect miracles. Virtually the only thing they could count on is their food, which is consumed in variety and quantity, shared with relatives and friends, even used as a weapon to ensure the silence of the Kitchen God.

The Kitchen God's sealed lips could utter no evil that could bring disaster to the household, nor could they extol good deeds to earn heavenly favors. But why take chances? Over the millennia the people have seen catastrophes befell innocents much more often than virtues rewarded. Another year of the status quo may be as hard as the last one, but would be equally survivable and is miracle enough. At least it should provide enough malt sugar for the next annual kitchen report.

Extra Special Thanks to Pearl and Tien Chi Chen @ http://www.asianamericanbooks.com