When the dragon roars

It signals the start of the Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival and this year 2009, we celebrate the Year of the Ox. For the Han people (Chinese) and 55 other minority groups, this is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Festivities are also held in other countries with which China had extensive interaction like Mongolia, Korea and Vietnam and in countries with large population of ethnic Chinese like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Canada.

Cultural presentations include the Lion Dance (Lang Sai) with performers from martial art schools visiting business offices to collect “choi chang” red envelopes with money hanging above the front door. The Dragon dance (Lang Ling), on the other hand, has performers carrying the dragon with movements in a “sinuous undulating movement” because of the belief that dragons bring good luck to people, which are “reflected in their qualities that include great power, dignity, fertility, wisdom and auspiciousness”. Very noble, this dragon!

It is the most auspicious time of the year to hold family reunions, eating good food, drink good wine and wish that the incoming year will bring to the family the best of health, wealth, and happiness. During the celebrations, the Chinese prepare foods that represent these aspirations and the symbolic significance of the dishes depends on factors like appearances, taste, ingredients used and the pronunciation of the Chinese name of the dish.

Best example would be fish since “fish” is commonly conflated with its homophone abundance” and the greeting for the New Year, nien nien you yi which is a homonym meaning to “have fish every year” or to be “prosperous every year”. In fact, an elaborate ceremony called the Yee Shang Tossing Ceremony (Yusheng, Yee Sang) has evolved to signal the start of the Lunar New Year.

Yee (fish) Shang (toss) is a salad utilizing strips of raw fish as the primary ingredient and the rest of the ingredients are mixed and tossed together; the higher the toss, the bigger the fortune! This tradition was developed in Singapore and Malaysia and both countries claim to invent it; inspiration is probably ancient China where references to “raw fish being eaten during this festive season were found in the Sixteenth Century Qing Dynasty” or perhaps even earlier like in the southern Chinese costal areas of Chaozhou and Shantou, during the Soong Dynasty. It is believed, however, that the modern Yee Sang was created by master Chef Than Mui Kai of Lai Wah Restaurant (Singapore) in 1964. Very difficult gyud, excuse me, this business of properly documenting the origins of a dish!

In Cebu, many locals sharing links to a Chinese lineage do celebrate New Year and Marco Polo Plaza, phone 253-111 (www.marcopolo plazacebu.com) leads the hotel industry with a 3-meter giant iron wok as the mixing bowl with 5-meter chopsticks for a gigantic Yee Shang Tossing Ceremony.

Your favourite food columnist joined the “Dim Sum and Then Some Media Launching” and many of the dishes and delicacies that were served during lunch are viewed as symbols of prosperity. We had several dim sum dishes like the Crispy bean curd skin dumplings, Shark’s fin dumplings with bird’s nest sauce and Pan-fried pot sticker dumplings which symbolize wealth because they look like silver ingots and gold bullions. These were placed in a bed of lettuce because the Cantonese word for lettuce, shengcai, sounds like “rising fortune”.

My favourite dishes were the Steamed whole red snapper with soy sauce and the Stir-fry fresh scallops with XO sauce. Certainly, I did not forget the Stir-fry egg noodles with mixed meat because the uncut noodles represent longevity and I definitely need this trait to continue my culinary accounts to my beloved readers.

For the Chinese New Year, pwede pud tikoy, a sweet and sticky steamed rice cake made from glutinous rice because it is believed to bring good fortune and cohesion in families. Hopefully, it will cushion the blow of this economic tsunami hitting us in this Year of the Ox.