| Esther Wu: Memories enhance Year of Silver Snake 01/25/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News Today marks the second day of the Year of the Silver Snake, also known as the lunar year 4699.
The Vietnamese call it Tet, the Koreans observe Sol-nal, and as a Chinese-American who spoke the Toi Son dialect, I grew up calling the holiday sein nian. No matter what you call it, each celebration has a common theme of "renewing family relationships."
Coming from a traditional Chinese-American home, I have many fond memories of family celebrations.
"Gung Hay Fay Toy," or "Happy New Year," was one of the first Chinese phrases I learned as a child. My parents told my two younger sisters and me that if we learned to say it properly, we would be rewarded with red envelopes, or hung baos, with lucky money. We quickly picked up the phrase and used it often.
The best hung baos came from Grandmother, or Nin Nin. My father's mother had immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong in1958. She came to live with us when I was 6 years old.
Her feet had been bound when she was young. Although the bandages were gone, she still hobbled on tiny, malformed feet, making it difficult for her to chase after us when we misbehaved.
Don't forget traditions
Nin Nin was concerned that her American-born progeny would forget the traditions and customs of home in Toi Son, China. She painstakingly explained each ritual.
"You'll forget soon enough," she would say with a sigh when we made up excuses to get away from her stories.
In a language I barely understood, Nin Nin told me about the Chinese zodiac and what each animal symbolized. I was born in the Year of the Dragon, or leung. She said dragon people were stubborn and headstrong. I refused to listen.
As family matriarch, she supervised the new year's preparations.
The house was cleaned from top to bottom. Brooms were not used on New Year's Day, for fear of sweeping good fortune away. Food preparation was done in advance to avoid using knives or scissors that might cut away good luck.
The first meal had to include dishes with pork, chicken and a whole fish so that those staples would be plentiful year-round. The head and tail of the fish were left intact to ensure a good beginning and end to the new year. Cellophane or rice noodles, which symbolize long life, and long stringy seaweed called fat toy were served. "Fat toy" is a synonym for the Chinese word for "prosperity," so the dish is thought to bring good fortune. Nin Nin and Mother would collaborate in making tay dois, or sweet red bean paste pastries, and lan fun tay. Some Chinese call this new year's cake nien gaw.
Candy for luck
The main ingredient – glutinous rice flour – symbolizes family cohesiveness. Made of rice flour, red dates and brown candy and topped with sesame seeds, the cake was translucent brown and had a chewy consistency. I never developed a taste for it, but Nin Nin insisted I eat it for luck.
Tradition also called for a dish called yuoun, marble-sized bits of glutinous rice flour dough. The balls were piled into bamboo racks and steamed. The balls stuck together as they cooked, symbolizing bounty and cohesiveness.
Nin Nin and my parents are now gone. And distance and time constraints have prevented my sisters and me from celebrating Chinese New Year the way we were taught. But time-honored traditions prevail.
I had chicken on the eve of the Lunar New Year. It was fried and came in a bucket, but it was still chicken.
And I bought nien gaw at a local Asian bakery. I still don't like the taste of it. But I had some anyway – for Nin Nin.
Esther Wu can be reached at P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, TX 75265.
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