Chinese New Year: Food from the North and the South

After the Reunion Dinner on Chinese New Year's eve, the Chinese people continue to eat special festive food on New Year's Day. 

One of the festive food that most people in the West associate with the Chinese New Year is the Peking Dumpling.  Dumplings originated from the North of China, where the custom is to prepare the dumplings on New Year's eve, then start eating the dumplings at midnight on New Year's Day.

I also made some dumplings for New Year's Day, although we did not follow the northern tradition of eating them at midnight.  The dumpling is such a versatile food -- it can be fried, steamed, or boiled in soup.

1.  Peking Dumplings or Jiaozi (饺子)

Ingredients:
DOUGH

• 450g organic buckwheat flour
• 450ml water
• flour for dusting

FILLING

• 450g Chinese leaves or white cabbage
• 450g lamb, minced
• 3 spring onions, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger root
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil

Method:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl, slowly pour in the water and mix to a firm dough.  Knead until smooth and soft.  Cover with a damp cloth and set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Blanch the cabbage leaves until soft; drain and chop finely.  Mix in the remaining filling ingredients and blend well.
3. Lightly dust a work surface with flour, knead and roll the dough into a long sausage of about 2.5cm diameter.  Cut into 80-90 small pieces.  Flatten each piece with palm of your hand, then with a rolling pin roll out each into a pancake about 6cm in diameter.
4. Place about 1 teaspoon of illing in the centre of each pancake and fold it into a half-moon-shaped pouch, then pinch the edges firmly so that the dumpling is tightly sealed.
5. To steam: put the dumplings in a steamer and steam for 20 minutes.
6. To fry: heat a little oil and shallow-fry the dumplings until golden brown on each side.
7. To boil: bring about 2 litres water to a rolling boil and drop in about 20 dumplings, stirring gently with chopsticks to prevent them sticking together.  Cover, bring back to the boil adn then add about 150ml cold water; bring to the boil again, this time uncovered.  Repeat twice more, remove the dumplings with a strainer and serve hot.  Store any uncooked Jiaozi in the freezer.

The Chinese New Year food from the south is quite different.  The Southerners prefer to eat a type of sticky rice cake made from glutinous rice flour.  This cake is called the New Year Cake, or "nian gao" (年糕).  As with many festive foods eaten during Chinese New Year, the nian gao is important for its symbolism.  The word "nian" in the original meaning of the stickiness of the cake (粘) has the same sound as the word meaning year or the New Year's eve monster (年); the word "gao" which mean cake (糕) has the same sound as the word meaning tall or high (高).  Therefore, when used together, the word "nian gao" also signifies the wish for yearly growth -- in wealth, status, prestige, and children's development.

2.  New Year Cake, or nian gao (年糕)

Ingredients:

• 450g glutinous rice flour 
• 225g honey 
• 350ml boiling water 
• 30g goat's butter 
• oil for frying

Method:

1. Stir the flour into a bowl.  Dissolve the honey in the water and slowly add to the flour, mixing to a smooth consistency.
2. Grease a 20cm cake tin with the butter and fill with the dough.  Steam over rapidly boiling water for about 2 hours.  Remove and invert onto a plate.  When cool, refrigerate, well covered, for at least 8 hours to harden.
3. To serve, cut the cake into diamond-shaped pieces and shallow-fry in oil on both sides until brown.  Serve hot on its own or with honey.

Since we didn't stay up to eat the dumplings at midnight on Chinese New Year's Day, we spent New Year's Day (January 31st, 2014) eating the food above, as well as catching up with the annual Spring Festival gala, which is a countdown programme shown on New Year's eve.

It is a four-and-a-half hour variety show that many Chinese people watch together after having their Reunion Dinner, that leads up to midnight on New Year's Day.  The programme is entirely in Mandarin so my readers who do not speak Mandarin may not understand most of the programme, especially the skits.

However, the celebration and festive atmophere are not bound by lanugage and can be enjoyed by all.  I have highlighted a few gems (songs and dance performances) from the programme that are not to be missed:

We also had a good laugh watching the langauge lessons from Happy Chinese.  Episodes two and three depicts the Chinese New Year, which is very relevant to us at the moment:

This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 2/4/14
3. History and Geography Meme: China activities for elementary
4. Entertaining and Educational - Chinese Paper Cutting
5. Collage Friday: Interest-led Learning Within a Classical Framework
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One Where We Kept a Baby and Still Got Stuff Done
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {February 8, 2014}
8. Chinese Activities Link Up 

Chinese New Year: Nian

Does anyone wonder why the most important Chinese meal takes place on New Year's eve, rather than on New Year's Day?  A very important reason has to do with an ancient story of how New Year's Day celebration came about.

The Chinese word for 'year' is 'nian' (年), which happens to be the same name for the ancient monster that used to terrorise people on New Year's eve.  Hence, the family dinner that takes place on New Year's eve ensures that everyone in the family is present at the same place to survive the terrible ordeal of facing the monster together.

Since the story is an ancient one, there are a few different variations but the gist of the story remains the same.

Therefore, on Chinese New Year's Day (this year it took place on January 31st), the Chinese people would celebrate having chased away the beast, 'nian', with a joyous fanfare of firecrackers, loud music and dances (through the lion dance and dragon dance), feasting, and good wishes to everyone.  Tiger got up early on Chinese New Year's Day and made me a card.  He took inspiration from the bowl of tangerines and drew a man eating a tangerine on the cover:

He was given a red packet with some money in it.  At Chinese New Year, the young and unmarried usually receives red packets from their elders or married relatives.

The red packet signifies a form of good wishes and protection from the elders to the youngsters.  The amount of money in each packet depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver, but the sum in each packet must always be an even number (but not contain the number 4, which is associated with death in the Chinese belief). The number 8 is extremely popular for the Chinese, because the pronounciation of the number 8, "ba" (八), is very similar to that of "fa" (发) which means to prosper.  The Chinese belief in numerology is another big topic on its own, but you'll get an overview of it here:

Just out of interest: the concept of lucky numbers is not unique to the Chinese.  Apparently, the West has its own idea of certain numbers being luckier than others:

This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/4/14)
3. History and Geography Meme: China activities for elementary
4. Entertaining and Educational - Chinese Paper Cutting
5. Collage Friday: Interest-led Learning Within a Classical Framework
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One Where We Kept a Baby and Still Got Stuff Done
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {February 8, 2014}
8. Chinese Activities Link Up 

Chinese New Year: Reunion Dinner

The most important meal in the Chinese year is the New Year's Eve dinner.  It is also called the Reunion Dinner because it is customary for Chinese people, regardless of how far away they are from their hometowns, to travel home to have this important meal with their family.  It is very similar to the concept of Christmas Lunch in England.

In ancient China and even some families in the rural areas where the tradition of many generations of the same family still live together or in the same village, the Reunion Dinner can mean a meal for up to 60 people.  It is always a time for feasting and togetherness.

 

I consulted the following book for recipe ideas.

Due to our dietary restrictions I have had to make certain improvisions and substitutions, so the dishes we had are not authentic Chinese dishes, but it's the best we can have while adhering to our food restrictions.

The dishes we had were:
1.  Boiled Thai Jasmine Rice

2.  Chicken with Lemon Sauce

Ingredients:

• 550g chicken breast meat
• 2 chicken eggs, lightly beaten
• 3.5 tablespoons tapioca flour
• 500ml extra virgin olive oil for deep-frying
• Juice from 2 lemons
• 200ml honey
• Slices of fresh lemon to garnish

Method:

1. Trim the chicken breasts, coat with egg and tapioca flour and deep-fry in hot oil, until golen.  Remove and drain.
2. Cut each breast into bite-sized pieces and arrange on a hot serving plate.
3. Heat about 1 tablespoon oil in a saucepan and mix in the lemon juice and honey, blend well and pour evenly over the chicken.  Garnish with lemon slices and serve hot.

3.  Five-Treasure Soup

Ingredients:

• 700ml stock
• 55g chicken meat, thinly shredded
• 55g lamb fillet, thinly shredded
• 55g bamboo shoots, thinly shredded
• 55g kale, thinly shredded
• 1.5 tablespoons sea salt
• 2 chicken eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon tapioca flour mixed with an equal amount of water
• finely chopped spring onion to garnish

Method:

1. Bring the stock to a rolling boil, add the chicken and lamb, stir to separate, then add bamboo shoots, kale, and sea salt.  Bring back to the boil and pour in the eggs.
2. Thicken the soup with the tapioca flour and water mixture.  Cook for a further 1 minute.  Ad just the seasoning , garnish with spring onions and serve hot.

4.  Roast Duck with Stuffing

Ingredients:

• 1 duck
• 3 tablespoons sea salt

STUFFING

• 115g glutinous rice
• giblets of duck
• 55g bamboo shoots
• 1.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon sea salt

Method:

1. Rub the duck skin with the sea salt.
2. Soak the rice in 175ml boiling water for 25 minutes.  Boil the giblets gently in water for 15 minutes and dice, along with bamboo shoots.
3. Heat the oil in a wok and stir-fry the giblets, bamboo shoots, and spring onions for 1 minute.  Mix in the sea salt, the rice and its soaking water and sea salt.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed.
4. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius.  Pack the stuffing into the duck cavity and close up the tail opening.  Place the duck in a roasting tin and cook in the oven for 30 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180 degrees Celcius and cook for a further 45 minutes.
5. To serve, scrape out the stuffing and spread out on a platter, chop the duck into bite-sized pieces and arrange neatly on top of the stuffing.

5.  Red-Cooked Shoulder of Lamb

Ingredients:

• Half leg of lamb
• 5 spring onions
• 4 slices of fresh ginger root
• 3 tablespoons of sea salt
• 115g of honey

Method:

1. Make sure the lamb skin is free of bristles and then score the rind and meat with a few cuts.
2. Place the meat with the spring onions and ginger in a large saucepan.  Cover with cold water and bring to the boil rapidly, skimming constantly.  Add the sea salt, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
3. Turn the meat over, add the honey, cover and continue cooking for about 1.5 hours.  Now reduce the liquid by boiling rapidly, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
4. To serve, lift out the meat and place on a deep serving dish.  Discard the ginger and spring onions and pour the liquid over the lamb.  The meat should be tender enough to tear into shreds with chopsticks.

6.  Braised Chinese Vegetables

Ingredients:

• 115g bamboo shoots
• 115g mangetout
• 225g Chinese leaves
• 115g beansprouts
• 1 red pepper, cored and deseeded
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon honey
• sesame oil to garnish

Method:

1. Roughly dice the fresh vegetables.
2. Heat the oil in a wok, add the bamboo shoots, followed by mangetout and Chinese leaves about 1 minute later.  Add the rest of the vegetables and stir-fry for about 2 minutes.  Now add sea salt and honey, and a little water if necessary.  Continue stirring for a further 1 minute or so, then add the sesame oil.  Serve hot or cold.

This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/4/14)
3. History and Geography Meme: China activities for elementary
4. Entertaining and Educational - Chinese Paper Cutting
5. Collage Friday: Interest-led Learning Within a Classical Framework
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One Where We Kept a Baby and Still Got Stuff Done
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {February 8, 2014}
8. Chinese Activities Link Up 

Chinese New Year: Preparations

The followin clip gives us a good overview of the traditions of Chinese New Year and why certain rituals are done at this particular time:

A huge part of the Chinese New Year customs and traditions have to do with family life, as shown by the following clip:

Even though the generic parts of the Chinese New Year tradition are still practised by Chinese people around the world, the more traditional (countryside) parts of the festival are not always known to the younger generation who are more used to living in cities:

Spring cleaning the house before Chinese Yew Year is part of the tradition of the festival, so we cleaned our house as much as possible with the major effort going into rearranging and cleaning Tiger's bedroom so that he now has his own personal place to work.

After that, we went to Chinatown to buy the ingredients that we would need for our new year's eve Reunion Dinner,

as well as a few decorations for the house.

London Chinatown is the most festive place in the UK to get a feel for Chinese New Year.  However, the scale of the celebration and the number of people involved are nowhere close to some places in the Far East, where the festival is featured more prominently:

After the decorations were put up around the house, Tiger also arranged a centrepiece of a bowl of tangerines with stem and leaves intact to represent wholeness, balance, wealth, and good luck.  Orange-coloured citrus fruit is a usual display during Chinese New Year for its symbolic meaning.  The orange colour represents gold or wealth, while the Chinese names of various citrus fruit sound like the word "ji" (吉), which means good luck.

Have you noticed the red table cloth?  We're nearly ready for the Reunion Dinner!


This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. History and Geography Meme: Ancient Greece activities
3. Entertaining and Educational - Energy
4. Collage Friday: Thankful for Homeschool
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with all the Snow
6. The (New) Homeschool Mother's Journal (2/1/14)
7. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/4/14)
8. Chinese Activities Link Up

Happy Year of the Wooden Horse!

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year.  Like the Western New Year, Chinese people usher in the Chinese New Year with a countdown and fireworks on new year's eve.

It is certainly much more festive and done a much bigger scale in the Far East than in the UK.  The Chinese New Year lights and the number of decorations in the Far East where Chinese is the dominant culture reminds me very much of the same level of festivities during Christmas time here.

There is also the Chinese New Year equivalent of the Winter Wonderland.

Tiger and I are joining many Chinese people around the world to celebrate this ancient tradition.  I will be taking a few days off to celebrate it with my family, but I hope to be back soon to share what we have done.

To all who celebrate Chinese New Year:

This post is linked up to Chinese Activities Link Up.

A Chinese New Year Taster

Being the last-minuter that I am, I must be asking for trouble by declaring on Monday that we plan to learn more about Chinese New Year this year, when the big day is only days away.  That is a sure way to work myself into a frenzy!

Luckily the V&A came to my rescue yet again, with a whole day of Chinese New Year related activities!  Woo hoo!  With many varied cultural activities prepared by professionals, all we had to do was to show up and work our way through them -- such an arrangement is this homeschool mum's best-case scenario.

The museum's central courtyard has a large landscape installation by a modern Chinese artist.  The landscape is of major significance in Chinese art, as seen in the art of bonsai and traditional Chinese landscape paintings.  While the pre-Impressionistic Western landscape paintings' emphasis is on realistic representation, the Chinese landscape paintings have always been non-representative, with its emphasis being on conveying certain philosophical and spiritual aspirations (most notably due to the influence of Laozi's philosophy as expressed in Taoism).

The first craft that Tiger made at the museum was the Chinese Opera mask.

The mask is made entirely out of paper and looks like this when completed:

Traditional Chinese Opera masks are painted directly onto the actors' faces, using specific colours and patterns to represent well-known operatic characters.

After the craft session, the museum even had a short "Introduction to Chinese Opera" workshop to take the children through a few of the uniquely-identifiable stage gestures and movements of each character.

Other activities Tiger was to do that day included:
(1) Making a mini kite out of lollisticks, craft tissues and coloured cards.

(2) Watching a paper cutting demonstration.

(3) Practising Chinese calligraphy.  The practice in Chinese New Year is to write certain auspicious wordings on a piece of red paper and stick them around the house to signify bringing good luck and prosperity into the home.  A very common word that is used is "fu" (福), that embodies the meaning of good luck and good fortune.  There are many different styles or schools of Chinese calligraphy, hence there are numerous ways to write the word "fu", as you can see Tiger practising below.

The day ended with us attending a traditional Chinese instrumental concert, performed by the musicians from the UK Chinese Ensemble.

The style, sounds, and atmosphere of traditional Chinese music is very different from those of classical Western music.  The concert gave the audience an excellent experience with a wide repertoire of solo pieces, duets, as well as ensemble pieces.  For example:
(1) a zither or guqin (古琴) ensemble:

(2) a yangqin (扬琴) solo:

(3) an erhu (二胡) and yangqin (扬琴) duet:

(4) a guzheng (古筝) solo:

(5) a xiao (萧)solo:

(6) a pipa (琵琶) solo:

(7) an ensemble piece:

The finale was a traditional Chinese New Year piece titled <<喜洋洋>>, loosely translated as "Beaming with Joy":

The score for this piece of traditional Chinese New Year music was rearranged for the ensemble performance at the V&A.  It was originally written for a full Chinese orchestra:

The day has been a good introductory overview to the Chinese culture.  To do justice to the depth and breadth of the Chinese culture (as it is with any culture), we will have to spend more time to study the individual components of this one-day "crash course" individually.


This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 1/28/2014
3. History and Geography Meme: Ancient Greece activities
4. Entertaining and Educational - Energy
5. Collage Friday: Thankful for Homeschool
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with all the Snow
7. The (New) Homeschool Mother's Journal (2/1/14) 
8. Chinese Activities Link Up

Eye on the Ball, Please! Part 3

This is the third part of a series of my termly plans.  The first two parts are:

1. Ball #1: Language Arts
2. Ball #2: Mandarin

Ball #3: Mathematics - Addition and Area
The way that we have been learning mathematics here seems to be increasingly topic- or themed-based rather than curriculum-based, which suits us fine.  We started off following a maths curriculum, which worked very well, but was starting to get a little tedious for Tiger.  Once we started experimenting with learning-what-we-want-to-learn-when-we-want-to in maths, the approach feels a lot more logical and natural to us and is what we do now.

This term we are going to focus on two topics:

1. addition
2. area

What About Gaps?
It seems that many homeschoolers are uncomfortable with the idea of not following a curriculum in maths.  Usually their biggest concern is gaps in their children's maths skills or knowledge.  Following an established curriculum certainly gives some people -- notably adult and children who are naturally predisposed to a systematic, highly organised way of learning -- a sense of security that they have "covered everything" that a child of a certain age/level needs to know.

The way that I handle the question of gaps is very simple:  I make a mental note of it when I notice it, then I find an opportune time to introduce it.  The next question then is, what is an opportune time?  Well, my definition of an opportune time is:

• when I have gathered the necessary teaching materials/resources; or
• when the topic ties in with another area that we are studying, e.g. there are many cross-curricula opportunities to be created around the topic of geometry, symmetry, tessallations, Islamic art, etc; or
• immediately - we are prepared to drop everything else if it is a matter of urgency to learn a certain topic.  So far, we haven't come across any situation that requires us to adress our mathematical deficiencies immediately.

My confidence in our approach comes from the realisation that:

1. Time is on our side.  Tiger is only nine years old so he still has quite a few years to go before he has to worry about standardised tests or entrance exams.  I might start panicking if we were still on the topic of addition when he is 19 years old.
2. Tiger is capable of buckling down to do the work when it becomes necessary.

Once I got over my initial fear of gaps (yes, I experienced much doubts and fears in the early days as well), I have come to view the learning of mathematics to be more than the acquisition of multiple sets of facts, short-cuts, and formulae.  It is a language of its own.  As soon as I realised that mathematics is a language, I decided that, as with any language-learning, establishing a strong foundation is very important.  Just as a strong language user needs to have a contextual base to understanding and mastering the subtlties of any language, a strong maths user needs to have be able to apply mathematical skills and knowledge for them to become meaningful.  Merely memorising mathematical formulae without the experience of applying them to solve real problems (as opposed to clinically designed textbook problems) is akin to memorising English idioms without knowing how to use them in the right context.


What About Practice and Mastery?
Having explained (I hope) above why I'm ok with Tiger's maths progress not following exactly in the same order or at the same pace as determined by any curriculum, you can see why I can tolerate us dwelling on any topic -- addition comes to mind immediately -- forever.  However, the time that we spend on any one topic is not used on repetitive drills or learning the same set of skills at the same level over and over.  An example is the latest addition game that we played.   Different maths skills were used at the same time to solve that set of problems -- addition, long multiplication, counting, number sense.  When we play maths games or riddles like the example that I have just referred to, both Tiger and I can easily and clearly determine whether he has any gaps in his knowledge (in which case we will work at closing those) or where his gaps are (so that we can direct our effort more effectively)

A tool that I find to be effective for practice is the Khan Academy's maths section.  I've mentioned before our sporadic use of the website whenever we feel Tiger needs to have more focused practice on any topic.  Most recently, we discovered a new feature on the website called Mastery Challenge, which is very similar to a series of short composite tests on various maths topics.  Tiger doesn't mind working on a few rounds of these each day.

To me, it works in the same way as what we have been doing at home to identify gaps and areas of improvement. For example, one of the recent challenges shows that Tiger needs more work on the long division (which we had touched upon briefly in November but not formally worked on yet).  With this information, Tiger watched the two-digit division video:

and worked through the example alongside the video, before attempting several rounds of two-digit divisions on the site.  Working on these exercises enables Tiger to solve a recent maths challenge, but it is not the way in which I would like him to learn long division (even though he certainly can do them mechanically now), so we will spend some time later in the year to learn division in a more visual, hands-on way.

I don't claim that our method of learning maths is superior to any other method, but it is one that suits Tiger's need for variety, applicability, and minimal repetition.