Happy Birthday!

Today is the 7th day of the Lunar New Year. According to Chinese tradition, today's 人日 (People's Day), i.e. everyone's birthday. On this special occasion, let me wish everyone a happy birthday!

As a People's Day Special, let me present to you the following collage of our first year old b-day party pictures:

Quiz 7

For those in the family, can you figure who's who in the collage? (Rule: You can't name yourself nor the one in your immediately family!)

For those not in the family, can you find me in the collage?

Hint 1: There are 19 of us in the generation. Two of us I can't manage to have their photos in time, while some pictures are actually repeating to make the collage a perfect square.

Hint 2: Due to the difficulty to have a hold of all the pictures, some were not exactly one-year old.

Hint 3: You may want to visit my photo album that shows the pictures in bigger size. I also included in the album some other pictures on the same occasions but with more people.

Isn't it lovely?

Please support an up and coming young artist:

http://photos.yahoo.co.jp/ph/cchoy/lst?.dir=/a7f0&.src=ph&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.co.jp/&.view=t

No Right Click

This is the problem of the touch pad of my notebook, so it's gone for maintenance again. (No. I have nothing in the harddisk. Everything is stored in my two portable harddisks, so nothing can be released.)

So I will have no computer at home for a while. That means blog will be updated less frequent (although I have lots to post), and also less traffic in Facebook. Be patient!

Chinese New Year -- The Tse Family Style -- The Celebration

We had the food, and we had to had a feast (or feasts) to finish them off.

(1) Old days in HK

Since we lived with grandma and grandma and my dad is the oldest brother, everyone came to our house for CNY. (This "everyone" meant Uncles 4 and 5 and their families, while the rest were in Australia and Edmonton. Those days, all that were in Canada were in Edmonton.)

The celebration started on CNY Eve and would last for four days.

On the first day, i.e. CNY Eve, everyone would rush to our house after work for dinner, and my mom would cook for around 13 people (Yiu-lun and the twins were not born yet). Like in Uncle and Aunt 2's house, we couldn't all crowd to the dinning table even though we would "enlarge" the table by adding on a very thin piece of metal plate (as in a Chinese restaurant, but theirs is made of wood. Very common gadget in the house those days when we still had big families.) We would therefore separate into an "adults table" (i.e. the dinning table) and a "kids table" (i.e. the coffee table, still in my house today!). Usually, the kids table would serve fewer, simpler and cheaper dishes than the adults table :(

The Uncles and families would come again on the CNY Day. They would come to our house to greet grandma and grandpa. The Uncles and Aunts and my parents would "pour grandma and grandpa tea" (another Chinese tradition for the young to do to the elderly), I think, and then grandma and grandpa would give them red pockets. Uncles 4 & 5 and their families would stay till after lunch and then off to visit some other friends and relatives. They would come again to have lunch on the 2nd and 3rd days of CNY and then the family CNY celebration was finally over.

One secret I never told anyone before was that I wanted to start my very own "CNY business" during those days. At the time, security of a housing estate was not as tight as now. There would be people knocking your door and said "distributing Choy Son (派財神 distributing "god of fortune")". Basically, it's a small piece of red paper with the words "Choy Son" ugly written on it with a Chinese brush. Usually, since it's CNY, people would receive the "Choy Son", gave the young guy a red pocket and sent him off.

I was less than 10 at the time, but I thought I could use a Chinese brush better than these people, and I had a big pool of "cheap labours" (i.e. Nobel, Sara and Belinda. Simon was too young at the time.), and I should be able to make good money from the same business :P

I thought about the same year after year but couldn't make it real even once :( May be I was too little to propose to my mom this crazy idea :(

(2) Less as old days in Edmonton

Same logic as in HK, everyone goes to Uncle and Aunt 2's house for CNY as they are the oldest in the area and live with grandma and grandpa most of the times. Unlike in HK, the celebration takes part only on CNY Eve (interestingly, on CNY Eve not on CNY day), and hence red pockets are also distributed on CNY Eve rather than Day.

(3) Nowadays in HK

As we are getting old, we have more plans during CNY. The celebration thus only means going to "yum cha" on CNY Day in recent years.

***** *****

The real CNY special of the Fact and the Myths of the Tse Family will come on 13 Feb. Stay tune.

Chinese New Year -- The Tse Family Style -- The Food

On the 2nd day of Chinese New Year, let's talk about some Tse Family tradition on the occasion.

When I was single-digit years old, we lived with grandma and grandpa. During Chinese New Year, grandma would make a lot of festive food for "ancestor worship" as well as the CNY feast. I can't remember all that she made, but here're some highlights.

(1) "Pond with duckies"

I don't know how it's called. Basically, it's made up of different kinds of flour (麵粉、糯米粉、粘米粉, etc.). Grandma would roll the dough into some small balls, short columns and duckies, and then arrange them in a round bamboo container so that it would look like some duckies swimming in a pond. (Grandma would let us play with the dough but all we could make were the balls and may be the columns.) Then, grandma would steam it and put some red colouring as decoration. Grandma would make a few "ponds" each time for "ancestors worship".

When the "ponds" were freshly cooked, we would eat them directly with soya bean sauce. After the first day, grandma would cut them into pieces and stir fry them just like "Stir fried Shanghai nin go (上海炒年糕)".

(2) Salty Chickens

Chickens were the main character of our CNY feast. The Consultant of the Fact and the Myth of the Tse Family said we would consume five to six chickens each CNY for different ancestors that we need to remember. The chickens were usually freshly killed (i.e. no frozen chicken) and boiled. For the first couple of chickens, we again would eat them directly with some oyster sauce. For the rest, grandma would use a lot of salt to sort of season them after the ritual, but the objective was actually for preservation. To salt fresh food is how people preserve food in the old days when there's no refrigerator. Grandma kept the style even though we had had refrigerator for a long time by then.

The salty chickens were usually re-cooked in one of the two ways: (i) steam; (ii) steam it on top of the rice so that the rice would soak up the chicken juice. The rice tasted real good as well as the chicken. Believe me. The salty chickens usually would take us till the middle of Lunar January even though we had it almost every single day! It still tasted good at the end of the period, although I have to say we (or at least me) was bored after eating them for half a month!

(3) Dragon Boat Rice Dumplings

Yes, this is right. This is our hometown's tradition to have "dragon boat rice dumplings" during Chinese New Year, but grandma would only make a few just good enough for "ancestor worship". (I will talk about grandma's "dragon boat rice dumplings" later on, so please don't comment on this for the moment.)

So much for the food. Let's talk about the celebration tomorrow.

鼠年大吉

Have a great Rat year everyone!

P.S. Huang Yong-yu is my favourite artist. Thanks to Apple Daily, I finally "own" his works!