China Talk Tuesday: Mid-Autumn Festival

Mid-Autumn Festival (or "Jung Chau Jit") is one of the most popular of the annual Chinese Festivals. In 2013, it took place on 9/19. (It changes every year, since it follows the Lunar Calendar.) Think of it as the ChineseThanksgiving - it is a day to gather family, enjoy traditional foods, and give thanks for the bounty of the year. If we lived in China, there would have been huge community-wide celebrations, and several days off of work as people traveled around to get back to Mom's House. As it is, there are certainly celebrations to be found in America, but they are often more crowded and further away than we want to deal with. So, we have our own traditions at home! 

The evening starts off with a large feast. This year, we had (clockwise from "12 o'clock"): cooked bean sprouts (nga choi), lotus root soup, seaweed salad (hoi jit), shitake mushroom and lettuce (dung gu saang choi), quick BBQ pork (cha sou), lemon pepper tilapia filets, and braised whole chicken. (Not pictured is the enormous bowl of chow mien - it was delicious!)

When it got dark, we went outside...to play with some fire. (This part would generally be kids dancing around with lanterns, but we just cut straight to the chase and broke out the birthday candles and lighters.) 

After we burned through our birthday candles, it was time for dessert! We had a selection of mooncakes. The ones on the right are store bought, made in a local bakery. The ones on the left were made by me the day before. (They were "gam sa lai wong yuht behng", which roughly translates as Ferrero Rocher Custard Mooncakes. Which is weird, because there is a) no ferrero rocher candy involved and b) the inside was closer to a poundcake cake pop filling than a custard. As in, it was a cake crumbled up with a stick of melted butter, and then rolled into balls, wrapped in pastry, and molded into leaf shapes. No custard involved.) (If you are interested in the recipe, you can find it here. Make sure you read all the comments for tips and insights!) 

We laid out a spread of mooncakes and fruit. SJ wanted to pose with the fruit, so he lay down on the table...or he was just really tired. One or the other. 

Wishing you all a season of joy, luck and blessings! 

A Little More LoLo New Year

thumbprint “cherry blossoms”

Wishes for a sweet New Year – lai si candy, candied winter melon (tong dung gwa), candied lotus seeds (tong lin ji), peanut cookies (min fan gok) and candied lotus root (tong lin yau)

Handmade “cherry blossoms”

My New Years princess

Noodles for longevity

Happy New Year, y’all. Chinese New Year is a 15 day-long celebration, with each day carrying its own traditions. Leaving us today….February 17. Hope it’s been great, y’all.

A Very LoLo New Year to You!

Sorry to tease y’all with that test post. I’ve been having some issues with Windows Live Writer, and tonight I uninstalled, and re-installed, the program. Success! Add to that a house full of LoLo’s for the past few weeks, and you’ve got a very lonely blog.

 

SURPRISE! I’m back.

 

In case you missed it, last Thursday was Chinese New Year. Earlier that week, my sister Myrnie and I put together a little party for the little ones.

A few paper decorations for the Casa.

Some finger painting. For the older kids, I painted black “twigs” onto their paper, and they added thumbprint “blossoms.”

While the kids were working, they had a special visitor. Some of the kids were more excited to see him than others…

MaMa fed him choi (greens) and he, in turn, went around the room wishing everybody a happy new year.

And doling out kisses. *MWAH*

After that, we changed into our “party clothes”, and it was time! to! go! outside! Obviously, my oldest niece (Ernie) and Siu Jeun were pretty excited. (Oh, and please give a big warm welcome to Siu Jeun’s “muh muh” and “un yun.” Yes, he named them himself. We are so proud. MuMu and Onion are a necessary part of life around here.)

Ming Wai was rather disappointed when she realized that her mother had a dress….and she had pants. Not even the addition of “puppy” to our family picture could get a smile out of her. (The dress, by the way, was my “Chinese” wedding dress. This was my first time wearing it in over 5 years. I’m telling you, the sigh of RELIEF when I realized it still zipped was audible all through my house! My mother in law was concerned. She thought I had fainted or stepped on a spider or something else equally traumatic.)

However, a pile of compliments, a hug and some tickles will go a long way towards coaxing a giggle from our little Princess!

 

Wishing you all a very prosperous New Year! (And a big thank you to Aunt Myrnie, who took all these pictures. *mwah*)

Thoughts on the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Please know, I haven’t read this book yet. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go here to see an excerpt. The book goes on sale on 1/11/2011) I plan to read it as soon as I can, and see what all the fuss is about. (How can there be fuss before the book ever comes out? Not sure.)

 

Does anyone have any thoughts to share? Has anyone read the book yet? Or read the Wall Street Journal excerpt?

 

I read the WSJ article yesterday, and was actually really excited. Yes, the lady sounds like a nut job – she threatened to throw her daughter’s dollhouse away, piece by piece, until the song the girl was practicing was perfect. But Mom, you’re not walking out the door yet. You won’t do it. ‘Then’, she said ‘I will burn all of your stuffed animals.’ The girl knew that her mother wasn’t about to start destroying her property The mother called her names, used guilt, fear, anything she could think of. And in the end? The girl, out of the blue, got the piece perfectly…and they both were THRILLED. Her mother believed she could do it, and simply didn’t let up until she was proved right.

 

I certainly don’t think I could ever ascribe to the Genuine Authentic Chinese Mother method spelled out by Miss Chua…but I think there are some things I can take from her model to use with my kids. I desperately want Ming Wai to develop self confidence…I want her to have a lot more than I have, that’s for sure! I want her to know that, if she tries hard enough, there are not many things that she canNOT do.

 

Sunday night, after reading the article, I put some theories to the test. I started very small – a Chinese phrase. It’s one that Ming Wai has known the words for forever. Two very simple words. I just wanted her to figure out how to put them together and phrase it into a request. We were at my sister’s house, so I took her into another room and told her I would not give her what she wanted until she asked me in Chinese. Mommy, help. No, I said. Say it in Chinese. Then I sat back. And waited. She giggled. Mommy, I don’t know how. “中文 (Chinese)”  I told her.

Mommy, 幫. (Mommy, help.)

 

“No.” I pointed again to the thing I wanted her to name. “What. Is. This.”

 

Finally, she got it. “Great! Now (holding up the second object) what is this?” She answered that one right away.

 

Then she phrased it into a request.

 

Then I gave her what she had asked for ten minutes before, along with a huge hug. “I knew you could do it!!!” She was all smiles.

 

I think that is the trick. What I gathered from the article that I read was that Chua expected excellence from her daughters…and worked with them until she got it. She was not in the kitchen, working on another project, and yelling across the house. She was sitting next to her daughter, endlessly drilling and demonstrating. And when the girl finally got it right (which has to happen eventually, right?), OH how the praise would flow. That is where Chua believes that children get confidence from: achieving a goal that they believed to be impossible.

 

In the case of the piano lesson, and the endless threats of the destruction of beloved toys, the girl, without even seeming to try any harder than the 14 dozen times she had tried before, she suddenly got the section of the song right. She glanced at her mother. She played it again. And again. Mom, this is so easy now! And it was. It was easy then, because she had mastered it. And then the praise flowed. Giggling, ‘proud of you’ type praise. Genuine celebrating.

 

As she said, not many things are fun until you are good at them.

 

Now, I don’t expect that I will begin to call my daughter names or threaten to burn her stuffed animals if she doesn’t perform as expected on a piano piece. I do expect, though, that I will consciously push my children a little harder. Keep at it a little longer. Sit still a little more, and use the age old technique of Drilling. Ming Wai is the type of girl to sit back, say “I just can’t do it” and leave it at that. But there will be things in life where that simply won’t be acceptable. I will not accept that she can’t speak Chinese. She CAN. Her white mother learned it in 12 weeks without ever hearing a syllable of Cantonese before. I will not accept that she cannot finish her school work. She CAN. It’s not impossible. It might be difficult, and certain subjects may take more (or a LOT more) work than others. And I guess that’s what I’m there for. And if I want, for them, the kind of skills that they will need to succeed in school…then I may just have to accept the fact that their “homework time”, at least for the first few years, might be just as much mine as theirs. I cannot sit my first grader down and expect them to understand everything by themselves. At least, I don’t see that happening with Ming Wai. I am a piano teacher – worksheets and I are no strangers!

 

I am really interested in seeing what others have to say on this topic. If not on this specific book, then just general thoughts on pushing kids, expectations for kids, and routines and methods for schoolwork. I remember being, generally, left alone to do my schoolwork. At times, there were some very late nights, as I put things off and couldn’t seem to get settled until after dinner to do any really big projects. It’s not that that’s a BAD way to do things…but I don’t see Ming Wai as being particularly successful with that model of studying.

 

(And yes, I’m not talking about Siu Jeun much here because…well, right now he’d just as soon throw a pencil as learn to use it for anything else. He’s 2, and will bring challenges all his own! Ming Wai is in her second year of pre-school, both years at home, and teaching her is STILL a blood-boiling challenge if she feels that she “can’t do it”. Heh. We know how to push each others buttons.)

 

Share your thoughts, y’all! I will respond to comments IN THE COMMENTS, so please be sure to check back  or click the box to receive follow-up comments in your e-mail box.

Chinese Gummy Bears

(image from Amazon.com)

See that bag of gummy bears up there? 6 pounds. Yes. It’s huge…and way more gummy bears than anyone needs.

 

I have one in my cupboard.

 

How did it get there? Well…now, that’s a little bit of a story. See, Lo Gung and I are trying to raise our children to be bi-lingual. English, obviously, is a shoe-in. They live in America! My entire side of the family speaks English! Piece of cake.

 

Chinese is a bit trickier. My husband is a native of Hong Kong, but is not here during the day. I am fluent in Chinese, but…well, it’s still my second language. And the things that I have learned to say sometimes don’t cover what I need to say while parenting. So, try as I might, I end up speaking English to the kids. A lot.

 

It’s been a struggle to get Ming Wai to speak in Chinese, ever since she learned to put together complex sentences in English. In fact, that was the week she stopped putting together ANY phrases in Chinese. She had a lot to say, and it was easier in English. She still has a basic set of Chinese nouns and verbs to draw from, but sentence construction is beyond what she thinks she can do. (And for a little girl whose biggest worry in life is being embarrassed…what she thinks she can do is a pretty big deal.)

 

Now, fast forward to last week. We were on our weekly family outing to Costco to pick up whatever we had deemed essential that week. Lo Gung was off at the pharmacy picking up something, and I was wandering through the aisles, trying to stay close by, trying to keep the kids occupied. Suddenly, I hear a clear little voice: 媽媽, 我 要 買.

 

I looked down at my kids. One cherubic little girl was looking up at me, uncertainly. What did you say?

“媽媽, 我 要 買”

 

That’s what I thought. “Mommy, I need to buy that.” When she realized that she’d said it right, the uncertainty in her face was replaced with pride and she lit up with a smile. It was beautiful.

 

We wheeled back around to see what had caught her eye. It was a huge case of Mike & Ikes. And it was $12. And it went into the cart. (Daddy later switched it out for an enormous bag of gummy bears that was half the price.)

 

Do you understand why I bought it? Why I let a little girl talk me into buying POUNDS of candy? It was because it was in  Chinese. It was because it was a full sentence, crafted by her, and spoken in Chinese without prompting. It was because it had never happened before. And it was because I was proud of her, and she knew it.

 

And you’d better believe that the only way she gets to eat any of them is to spout out more Chinese. One gummy bear for each syllable. Heh. These gummy bears are going to last a while!

Little Salty Fishes and a GIVEAWAY!!

The youth in our congregation had an activity last week where their leaders hoped to expose them to foods from all over the world. They contacted anyone and everyone they could think of who had lived or worked overseas (either as a citizen or as a missionary, etc.) and asked us to provide a small dish of something…interesting. Something that might challenge their palates. I decided that a small dish of 鹹魚 (little salty fishes). They are fish. Tiny ones. That have been dried. To prepare them, grab a handful and rinse them off. Mix them up with a splash of oil and a splash of soy sauce, then steam them. Mine can’t seem to get soft enough if they’re just steamed with the rice, so I ended up putting them into a tiny pot with some water and cooking them until they were tender.

My kids love them! I never did hear if the kids at church liked them. Some people have issues with eating entire…animals. You know – with eyes and everything. Heh.

Now. For the GIVEAWAY. CSN has contacted me to do ANOTHER giveaway for them. My peeps, I'm so excited!! Because of my fancy Preferred Blogger Status (and your great responses to past giveaways), we're up to $55! All you need to do is leave a comment on this post, and I will choose a winner on Friday (11/26) in the morning (Black Friday!). Comments will close Thanksgiving, at midnight. The giveaway is open to anyone, but the gift certificate code will not cover international fees, so if you're a friend from Far Away, please be prepared to cover those yourself.

$55 can get you quite far on your Christmas list if you shop carefully at CSN, and they have some great deals right now!

 Happy holidays, y'all, and good luck!

Siu Jeun and the “tong tong”

Ok, so what we’ve got here is an extra 1/4 cup of icing left over after a birthday cake project…and a really mean Mom.

I’ll translate.

No, will take too long. I’ll sum up.

Mom has a bag of icing. Dad has a flip camera. Siu Jeun has a deep rooted love for all things “candy” (or “tong tong” in Chinese) and an innate trust of his mother.

Mom asks if he wants “tong tong”, Siu Jeun hesitantly gets a mouthful…and then realizes that 1) it’s “candy” in his mouth (hooray!) and 2) he really, really doesn’t want any more of that goopy crazy candy!

(This is the video I promised a few days ago. See? He understands Chinese! Awesome, right? Heh.)

PS – You should have seen how much I packed into poor Lo Gung’s mouth.

PPS – Today marks the fifth anniversary of the day that I married my best friend in the whole wide world. To see how we met, go here. I just realized, of course, that I never finished the story. About halfway through, I got a comment that made me embarrassed and….I just stopped. Which was silly. So, maybe I’ll go about finishing that story, yeah? In the meantime, there are four installments there. And the fourth is…short. What can I say, except I was writing it in my spare time…and that day, I didn’t have much time to spare!

PPPS – Lo Gung? I love you, and you’re my favorite forever. Thank you for being the best friend, the best dad, and the best husband I know! And? I love you more than tofu, so there. (Ummm…sorry. Inside joke. See, it’s something I say to bug him…since nobody really loves tofu? And…well, ok. Maybe you just had to be there.)

PPPPS – In honor of our anniversary, I promise never to attack you with frosting again. Cross my heart. *mwah*

What a LoLo does in Lolo Land….Part 2

OK, remember this crazy picture? Keep that crazy hair in your mind, because we’re about to continue with our adventures in LoLo Land.
Because, I present to you….LoLo haircuts!

We went to a local beauty school, at the recommendation of one of my high school buddies. What do you think?
(Apparently, I have High Hair Density. Roughly translated, that means I could take a pair of shears to my own head, and generally come out OK in the end. So, that’s exactly what I did a week later. Yea! It was a little too…’80’s Power Suit for my taste. But, sweet Gu Je up there always looks fabu. *grin*)
Another highlight of our LoLocation? Group Cousin  Bathtime!  Would you check these two out? Booky(pronounced BOO-key) was born in October. Siu Jeun, on the right, was born in December. We very carefully lined up their heads on the grout line, even though it doesn’t look like it in this picture. But can you see? Her hips are down to his knees!! That girl got ALL the height in the family, seriously.
   
Still coming up…our yummy, yummy trip to Richmond, BC. I love visiting that city. I think Gu Je, my Sister in Law, put it perfectly – it’s the only place, outside of Hong Kong, where you never have to wonder if the woman at the cash register or the man handing you tea and bread will understand Cantonese. It’s Richmond. They will.

PS - 中秋節快樂!!!! Today is Mid-Autumn Festival. The best way I can describe it is…..Chinese Thanksgiving? It’s a harvest festival, and one of the two BIGGEST festivals of the year. (The biggest being Chinese New Year.) The festival is celebrated by surrounding yourself with family, fruit and fire. (Children light electric lanterns and bigger kids are given permission to play with small red candles on the sidewalk. Lo Gung still remembers taking all his candles and melting them together on the sidewalk to make one SUPER candle. Heh. Boys, right?! We’ll be celebrating this morning with my nieces, a few Chinese books, some craft supplies to make our own lanterns, and moon cakes!)

China Talk Tuesday: “Niu Niu”

Hello, everybody, and a very happy Tuesday to you! Today I would like to talk to you about books. Books in Chinese. But one book, in particular. This book is called “Niao Niao” and was written by Manuela Olten. It was then translated, I believe, by Wang Xing.

You must understand two things before I proceed:

1) I did NOT choose this book. The kids and I went to the library yesterday and happened to find a stack of Chinese children’s books sitting on one of the tables. Siu Jeun pulled this bright orange one out, with the funny boy on the front, and decided it had to come home with us.  All I saw was a funny boy, holding a roll of toilet paper.

2) I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, read Chinese. I can recognize less than 10 characters. “Niao” is not one of those characters.

 

That night, when we all gathered in Ming Wai’s bed for our bedtime story, Lo Gung walks in with two of the books the kids had picked out. One was a sweet little one about a rabbit who loves his mother. The other was this one. Siu Jeun’s book.

He started with the title. In Cantonese, it’s pronounced “Niu Niu.”

Heh. I know that one, when you put it that way.

It. means. pee.

If you don’t like potty humor, please stop reading now. (Myrnie, this means you.)

(This makes me blush…mostly because when I was four, I met a girl who was JUST as proud as our little female friend up in that picture that she could pee standing up. So, so strange.)

(Myrnie, I DID warn you.)

The entire book, start to finish, is about the various, appropriate (and inappropriate) places this child finds to pee.  Public toilets, bathtubs, pools, his own potty at home…he does it all.

(His mother covers public toilets with plenty of paper, so he won’t get his bum dirty.)

 

Finally, his mother trusts him to go alone into the men’s lav. He’s faced with a row of weird toilets, hanging on the walls. He’s never seen them before, since he’s never been in a men’s lav before.

He very carefully covers them with paper, since he’s sure they’re filthy, and then proceeds to sit and do his bi’dness.

The end.

I was blushing. I was snorting. I was trying very hard not to be aghast.

Siu Jeun? Well, let’s just say this is the FIRST time he’s sat through story time, RIVETED by what was on the page.

Oy. Does it really start this young?!

China Talk: Yan Yan Crackers

(Look at me all crazy - China Talk Tuesday...on Tuesday! Again! Somebody send help.)

Lo Gung has spent four of the past eight weeks in Seattle, Wa, on business trips. It's been...an interesting two months. We've been trying to get Ming Wai excited about the move....and all I could come up with was to inform her that the Pacific Northwest was a land full of cousins...and Pocky. She had only recently discovered  Pocky during a trip to see her MaMa (grandma) and was quite taken. (Pocky, by the way, are long thin skewers, made of cracker, and dipped 2/3's way into chocolate. Pretty tasty. I'm not sure if Pocky are originally Korean or Japanese...but I've always found them on the Japanese aisle of the grocery store.)

After the first Seattle trip, Lo Gung came home with Pocky...and was met with horror and disbelief. "This isn't Pocky!" she wailed. Even though it said "Pocky" on the front of the box...try explaining that to a three year old. She explained what Pocky mean to her, and Daddy gave it another try after the second Seattle trip. 

Success! 

Also long, thin crackers...although not as long, nor as thin, and with rather random little sayings and tidbits printed on the side. 

Muuuuuu, y'all. 

Siu Jeun was a fan as welll...

Muuuuuuu. Do not be timid.


What do you bribe your kids with? What can get them excited about the most unknown of unknown destinations? Please share!

China Talk: Mixed

Just something short and sweet for your Tuesday morning. (And look! China Talk Tuesday...ON A TUESDAY! Just 'cause we like to mix it up here at Casa LoLo...keep you guessing.)

Last weekend, we had the most marvelous time - we packed our two kidlets into the car and drove into Chinatown to meet with some friends of ours and their five kidlets for dim sum and some general wandering.

We had a great time, and I'll go into more detail later so that should you ever find yourself in Chinatown in Manhattan and in want of a good nibble...you'll know where to go.

However, the story I wanted to relate today took place just after we left our friends for the day and went our separate ways to find our cars. To reward Siu Jeun and Ming Wai for a day (mostly) drama free, we stopped into a small bakery and picked out a few fruit drinks to share during our walk back to the car. I entertained Siu Jeun while Ming Wai and Lo Gung went up to order the drinks.

When they returned, Lo Gung was laughing. Apparently, a woman standing at the counter had struck up a conversation with him that went something like this:

Is that your daughter? She's so pretty! 


(Of course, it was all in Chinese, so it sounded more like "Haih mh haih neih go neuih? Hou leng ah!")

Our favorite part came next:

Keuih "mix" dat hou leng!

Essentially, the woman said "She mixed up so pretty!"

It made our little Ming Wai sound like an art experiment...but we still had to agree. And chuckle.

(Most people can't tell that Ming Wai's parents look so VERY different from each other...unless they also have a husband that looks VERY different from themselves and recognize their own children's traits in my children.)

China Talk: Pearl River

This is a plug for...a store I've never seen.

Pearl River.

BUT! What a store! Their brick n' mortar location is in SoHo (in New York City), but they have an online store as well. Shipping is really reasonable (starting at $8 for any purchase less than $20.)

I would be lying if I said I wasn't drooling over some things in the shop.
Check out this bowl!

($5.25)

We already have a bowl like this...but I'd like to get some rice bowls to match it.


($2.95)
Matching bowls!

(Only $1.50, available in flower or dragon designs)
Here are some fabulous melamine dishes...wouldn't these be great for kids to use?!

There are also other things...like this candy!

And these little figurines!

($12.50)

The prices are really, really reasonable...and everything is just super cute! My favorites, of course, are the dishes.....I love the melamine ones!  (There might be a field trip to SoHo in our future before we move West in a few weeks!! hehe)

(Note to any local friends - we're planning on one more Saturday trip out to Chinatown in NYC before we leave in June. If you'd like to tag along and see Chinatown, drop me a line! We mostly just go to eat, and have our favorite streets and shops to visit, so be sure to come hungry! Mmmm.)

(All images from the PearlRiver.com website)

China Talk: The Chinese, it is Coming

For the past week or so, I have been drilling Chinese into Ming Wai's pretty little skull. I speak Cantonese all day, and she answers me in English. All. Day. Long. I then repeat what she said, translating it into Cantonese, and then ask her to repeat back what I just said (which was a translation of whatever she had said in the first place).

That's starting to change, though. Slowly. S.l.o.w.l.y. She is a pleaser, and she knows speaking Chinese makes me pleased. Thus...she is trying. However, she is also very hesitant to make mistakes. Thus, she is three and a half and is just starting to answer my queries in Chinese.

On Sunday, as we drove to church, I had the radio playing. "Mommy, I want it louder!!!!!" I informed her that asking me that way was not going to get the results she desired, so she changed tactics. "Mommy, ho mh hoyih....syut gwai?" I tried really, really, really hard not to laugh. I repeated it back to her, to make sure that I understood what she was saying. Then I said no. Because she had just asked me if I could...refrigerator. (It's a word she learned last week, but hasn't ever used before. It bears no resemblance to the word she was looking for, but...you know what? It was a word from the Chinese part of the brain, and I'll take it!) I told her that she had just asked for a refrigerator. Her response? "N....oh!" I corrected her, and then turned the music louder.

Sometimes, she gets it spectacularly right, though. (Bear with me. I've been sweating over her Chinese language skills for nearly 4 years. Teaching a child a foreign language, when it is your second language, is TOUGH!)

This morning, we were sharing a grapefruit. (Which I was NOT pleased about. I didn't think the kids would like it, so I gave them a bite so they would leave me alone. THAT backfired. Now I have to share my grapefruits. *grumble mumble*) I speared out a piece for me. "Nigo haih ngohge." (This is mine.) I spooned out a piece for Siu Jeun. "Nigo haih Siu Jeun ge." (This is Siu Jeun's.) I spooned out a piece for Ming Wai. "Nigo hai Ming Wai ge." (This is Ming Wai's.)

I spooned out the next piece, and I heard a little voice next to me. "Nigo haih Siu Jeun ge!" I didn't say anything as I spooned out the next piece. "Nigo hai Ming Wai ge!!" While she was chewing her piece, she said. "Gogo haih Mommy ge!!!"

I cannot TELL you how proud of her I was. Not only did she correctly form sentences...she even changed the tense for my piece (gogo means "that" while nigo means "this.") She looked at me, grinning, knowing that she had just done a Really Good Job.

The best part? Siu Jeun is like a little parrot right now. He is copying words left and right, and even remembering some of them. (Although, I might be the only one in the world that would know that "Goo Goo Eek." is chocolate. It kind of makes sense...in Chinese, it's "jyu gu lihk." So, he's close....) When Ming Wai speaks Chinese, so does Siu Jeun. And that just warms my heart.

One more quick story, because I want to remember this. The other night, she spit out her first (to my knowledge) self-constructed Chinese sentence. And it was awesome. She climbed out of the bathtub and started drying herself off. Suddenly, she stood up and thought for a moment, then grinned and said very slowly, "Ngoh pet-pet hou hoisam!!!" I started to laugh and then congratulated her. She had just informed me that her rear end was very happy. And I suppose it was, being freshly washed and all. Heh.

China Talk: Red Bean Things 豆沙角

(Yeah, I know - it's not Tuesday! I've obviously been unable to come up with new China tidbits for y'all every Tuesday...so I'm just going to mix them in as they come to me. Sound good?


I really wish I could tell you what these things are...but the best I can do is dau sa gok (豆沙角) . It translates into red bean (azuki) paste...corners.

So...what is a Dau Sa Gok? Well, Dau Sa is a paste made of red (azuki) beans and sugar. The wrapper (the part that's folded, and thus - gok, or corners) is made from...something magic, in my MIL's kitchen. Heh. (I cannot find any mention of these things online, but my mother in law has promised to teach me how to make them.) So...basically, a little dumpling, full of a sweet paste made of mashed up red beans and sugar...fried. And then steamed, if you aren't lucky enough to get at them fresh.

Oh, and they are delicious. Both my children love them!

Anyhow, she shows up with a bag of these things in her suitcase at least once a year. She forms them at home, fries them, and then packs them up for us. When we want to eat them, we steam them for 30 minutes...and devour. These treats are common during Chinese New Year.

Those two crescent ones up there are the "normal" shapes, perhaps because they resemble the old golden money from China? That other one...well, it's supposed to encourage your next child to be a boy.

And no I will not elaborate on that shape.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

But they are delicious, y'all. 

Chinese New Year, LoLo Style

As promised, our New Years!! The celebration stretches over a few days. It starts with a MAD round of grocery shopping to get ready, continues with a series of meals (with various traditional components) and ends with a room full of family members, all happy and a few pounds heavier.
Here are a few of our highlights…..

Bringing in the New Year with tea for the “elders”. Everybody’s laughing because they’re all spewing out as many “New Years Wishes” as they can possibly remember.

New Years Eve dinner, after a long day in NYC – Soy Sauce Chicken, Choy Sum, Broccoli with Garlic and “Siu Yuhk” (pork with crispy skin). These were all purchased in Chinatown. All we had to do when we got home was cook some rice, and cook up the Choy Sum. Oh, and long noodles on Sunday afternoon for Long Life. (Yes, it's top ramen. And yes, my mother in law was a little disappointed that that's all she could find in my pantry to cook for 8 hungry people for lunch. *sigh* It's hard to stock pantries for TWO different cooking styles - American and Chinese. I had plenty of stuff for PB&J!)
Nothing sour on the first day of New Year! A tray of assorted sweets – candies, coconut and sugared Winter Melon. Aren’t those little kitty packages cute?? There are two white lemon jelly balls inside. Oh, and then sesame balls filled with lotus paste. Yum, yum, yum!
 
Aaaand…..my favorite part of any Chinese New Year, the Feast! Ours was on Sunday night. MaMa cooked up some ribs and onions and turned them over to me to finish. BBQ sauce and molasses, y’all. Gotta be true to my roots. MaMa and her sister in law hit the kitchen, and turned out the rest of the dishes – pan fried Yau Baan fish steaks, steamed lettuce with oyster sauce, Braised Pig Tongue, Asparagus with Goji Berries, Pan Steamed chicken (with yummy ginger and scallion dipping sauce) and, of course, RICE.

No meal is complete without…the little boy that can’t wait to start! Poor guy - he saw us cooking for two hours, and was getting a leeeeelte impatient to dig in. Heh. That's my boy!