What I like about Chinese New Year

What comes to your mind when Chinese New Year is approaching besides the plentiful cleaning up to do and the damages caused by giving out ang pow? For me, it must have been the festive goodies that I get to eat and the chinese tradition of dressing up for home visiting...


Typical Routine & Goodies for Chinese New Year:

Festive Goodies
There're the 肉干 Sliced BBQ Pork, Pineapple tarts (Didn't manage to get this year, so I'm going to attack it at the relatives'), the Love Letters and many more!

Reunion Feast
For my family, it has always been steamboat with pig stomach soup as the soup base (and I've always love the steamboat!).


It's slightly different for DC's family who will cook more sumptuous meal with rich seafood and chicken (recent years we've also had 盆菜). Like last year, we had our reunion dinner at DC's bro house.


New Year Day 1 年初一
Breakfast was:
Vegetarian dish with rice and the yummy salty "Fu Yu" (fermented soy?) at DC's family and it's a tradition to 添饭!


My mummy will cook the delicious red dates and dried longan soup and we'll drink a bowl before setting off to home visiting.

Lunch was at the relatives house:
At Ah Ma's house, my uncle will definitely cooked his specialty fried 五香, fried chicken wings, fried prawns and fried fish.


This year, at DC's uncle's house, we tasted a different new year food - Peranakan version of popiah. However, the ingredients are not wrapped into a roll, instead, they were all placed in a cripsy cup biscuit. It tastes heavenly yummy and reminded me of Ah Ma's popiah veg! :)

Then come dinner:
Always, there will be home made yusheng 余生 on the first day of CNY at DC's aunt house and there's also delicious Buhhda Jump Over the Wall 佛跳墙!


New Year Day 2 年初二
Lunch at my maternal grandma's house. I always attack the abacus 算盘子 and chicken wings! :) No black coffee for me this year as I'm forbidden to take coffee and tea.


New Year Day 7 年初七
DC family's tradition is to eat 7 vegatables on this day. Supposed to eat yusheng on 人日 with my family but we postponed it to Day 9, 3 Feb 09 because there was a baby birthday celebration on that day.

New Year Day 8 年初八
Funny tradition that the Hokkiens have, i.e. to pray to the sky 拜天宫 at midnight on the 8th day of the lunar new year. My parents always stay up on this day and prepared lots of offerings (two sugar canes included).

New Year Day 15 年初十五
There will be good food on that day.

There's also the Sentosa Flowers, the 河畔 and the Chingay parade during this festive period. Also, the lion dance and dragon dance that DC loves. We would love to catch them all this year... :)

I enjoyed this year as much as last year's. Hope you enjoyed yours too. Happy Lunar New Year! :)


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Feast during Chinese New Year