Dragon Boat aka Dumpling Festival

This is the day which falls on chinese calendar 5th day 5th lunar month of the year, celebrated by all chinese around the world yearly. There is a legend behind this which you can easily googled.

Grand Dragon Boat Race festival will normally be held annually in Penang. As in China, there will be 3 days off day. In Hong Kong, they observe as national public holiday.

We celebrate this day by eating rice dumpling. Every year our friends will be giving us homemade dumpling. As this year hubby business partner's mom just had a surgery, she did not make any. But we are so blessed to receive dumplings from our son's friend, Mindy. Her mom made such a yummylicious dumpling full of goodies with glutinous rice with fillings such as chestnut, dried scallop, dried oyster, Chinese mushroom and roast pork.

Choices of savory or sweet dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaves

My husband insisted that we must follow the tradition, there must be dumplings to be eaten on this day. By the way is one of his favorites.

CNY to me

Chinese New Year this year fell on Monday, 8 February 2016. We normally take this opportunity to visit relatives. My hubby stick closely to tradition when comes to CNY.  Reunion food must be what his late mom had always been preparing. Tour or travel overseas is a no no because he believes that tradition must be carried on, visit to elderly and relatives is a must to strengthen family ties.

Reunion Dinner

To children or single adults, they enjoy eating, gambling and collecting angpows/red packets. Some will watch movies together with family members since everyone has days off. 

Toss to prosperity "Lou Sang" is being practised here in Malaysia, thus you will find all restaurants will have this dish. You can homemade too.

I am extremely busy weeks before making sure spring cleaning, buying all ingredients required to cook 7 reunion dishes, coordinating food catering for 1st day CNY and the 1st Saturday for open house, buying all the plants or flowers to have the CNY feel also getting stuff as gifts during the visiting.

English style garden

It has been years that his uncles/aunties/cousins (his late father side) will be coming to our house on 1st day of CNY. Total headcount will be around 60 pax. Thus I will have to make sure lunch is served. The other open house on Saturday is to cater for all his relatives (his mother side), for those who could not come on 1st day (his father side), friends, business associates, staff and my side of family members/relatives, our children's friends and neighbors. Normally it will be about 150 pax. 

One thing that stress me up, the food must be enough but normally there will be leftover and we need to stuck them in my fridge to clear in next day or two. 

My routine yearly is more or less the same, this year was such:

CNY Eve : prayers at 11am, reunion dinner 8pm

1st day: Open house cum lunch, evening to mom's house gathering with sibblings and uncles/aunties/cousins

2nd day: Balakong/Sri Petaling/Puchong/PJ

Minimum 7 houses 9am till 6pm

3rd day: Pray parents in law in pagoda, visit to 2 relatives in Cheras follow by Bukit Jalil, my uncle's house

4th day: PD and Melaka

5th day:  Back to work

6th day: Open house

7th day: Gombak/ Setapak

8th day: Preparation for prayers at 12 midnight

Toss to prosperity

To Hokkien, actual new year falls on 9th day of CNY thus prayers at 12 midnight on 8th day follow by fire crackers.

Visiting all relatives a must before I start covering friends. The house that I will not miss will be my ex- lady boss house. 

My reunion dinner with mom and sibblings will be a day before the eve or a week and at times on the eve but for lunch before depending on which day CNY falls on. As my father is separated from my mom, thus we will try accommodate a meal with him as well.

We celebrate CNY for fifteen days with 2 days public holidays and school will close for a week.

Enjoy celebrating, eating and spending time with family. Hope for a prosperous and healthy year!

QIngMing

Qingming or Cheng Beng is a traditional festival for ancestor worship. It usually falls on April 5th and at times April 4th. 

This is the yearly tradition where Chinese will visit their ancestors’ cemeteries, clean their tombs and serve their dead family members some food or fruits.  This tradition is being practised in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.  You are allowed to carry out the worshipping 10 days before and 10 days after the actual day.

After the cleaning and prayers, the family members will burn the afterlife paper money or replica material goods such as clothes, shoes etc.

This practice is an act of being filial. One of the food item that is being offered is Fatt Kueh or Prosperity Cake.  You are required to decorate the graveyard with Josstick, silver, gold and color paper and stone on top of the papers as an act of collecting wealth.

An yearly affair at burial site

This prayer was for those cremated

Winter Solstice Celebration in Malaysia

Winter Solstice Celebration or Dong Zi  falls on 22 December every year and occasionally on 21 December.  This is an important festival where every family will gather to eat Tangyuan or glutinous rice ball which symbolize family unity. It is also a day where everyone becomes a year older!

The balls are boiled in water until they float. Boil water with rock sugar, bruised ginger and screw pine separately.  Add on the balls as a sweet dessert.

Dong Zi means arrival of winter. The arrival of winter means the farmers would lay down their tools and celebrate their harvest by having a feast with family members.

The Chinese community in Malaysian observes this festival just like other countries such as Singapore, China, Hongkong and Taiwan.  They would gather family members and celebrate a good meal together.

It is also noted that if any immediate family member passed away, then you are not allowed to prepare Tangyuan at home for at least 3 years.

Glutinous rice balls prepared at home