Dinner Of Reunion And Luck
By XuJingxi | China Daily | Updated: 2017-01-27 07:56
Spring Festival Eve is the time for a family feast and this yearchicken is the star attraction. XU JINGXI reports from Guangzhou.
Pick up a piece of chicken with chopsticks, dip it into acondiment made by combining minced ginger, diced shallot and soy sauce, thentear up the light-colored, nearly white skin and bite the tender meat.
It makes Zou Xiaolu's mouth water whenever the 25-year-oldsouthern Chinese girl thinks of "white cut chicken", a dish inCantonese cuisine
The dish is Zou's favorite but she said it's difficult to findwell-made "white cut chicken" in Beijing where she works, as it isalways overcooked.
"The Spring Festival Eve is the most exciting day in theyear," says Zou, who moved from Guangzhou to Beijing after graduatingthree years ago, but returns home every year to celebrate Chinese Lunar NewYear with her family.
Then, Zou, along with her parents, grandparents and her uncle'sfamily, sit around the table to enjoy the Spring Festival Eve dinner.
"It (the meal) is not only a family reunion but also amoment to satisfy my 'Cantonese stomach'," she says.
There is a saying in Cantonese: "It is not a banquetwithout chicken."
Guangdong people's love for chicken can be seen in theirnumerous ways of cooking it - boiling, steaming, salt-roasting, stewing andstir-frying, usually seasoned with soy sauce, scallion oil or "sandginger", a special kind of ginger grown in Guangdong that is more pungentthan other varieties.
The warm and humid weather of Guangdong may also have somethingto do with the local preference for chicken over beef and mutton. The lattertwo generate dryness and heat in the body, from the point of view oftraditional Chinese medicine practitioners. Thus, they are more popular innorthern China where the winters are severe.
Since this year is the Year of the Rooster, according to theChinese zodiac that features 12 animals, chicken will undoubtedly be the centerof attraction at the table for the Spring Festival Eve dinner in Guangdong.
Besides chicken, a typical menu for the Spring Festival Evedinner in Guangdong includes fish, shrimp, pork knuckle, pork tongue, driedoysters and rice cake.
Why? Because these ingredients' names sound like"lucky" words in Cantonese, the dialect of Guangdong.
Like in Mandarin, the word for fish sounds like"surplus" and the word for cake sounds like "high" inCantonese. Therefore, a dish made using fish symbolizes a new year with lots offoods and money.
A dish made using rice cake means you want the children to growtaller and the adults to get promoted at their workplaces.
Only Cantonese-speaking people understand the "lucky"words which sound like the ones for shrimp, pork knuckle and dried oysters becausethe Mandarin versions are different.
The word for shrimp sounds like "hah", while the wordfor pork knuckle sounds like the phrase for "do it easily". The wordfor "tongue" is pronounced like the word "profit", and theword for dried oyster sounds similar to the word for "good business".
"Guangdong also likes to give 'lucky names' to dishesserved at the Spring Festival Eve dinner. It is nice to share these dishes withloved ones as if we are sharing good luck," says Wen Zhibin, president ofWen Qifu Restaurant, a restaurant chain in Guangzhou specializing in Cantonesecuisine.
This year, the restaurant has 10 set menus for the SpringFestival Eve dinner, priced from 1,388 yuan ($202.38) to 3,988 yuan per table.The dishes all have "lucky" names. For instance, a dish called"make money easily" is made with stewed pork knuckle and lettuce,whose Chinese name shengcai sounds like "earn money" in Cantonese.
Wen's restaurant will serve about 260 tables of 10 to 12 peopleeach at its three locations in Guangzhou this Spring Festival Eve. And all ofthe tables had been booked two weeks in advance, says Liang Qinghua, therestaurant's manager.
"More people now dine at restaurants on Spring Festival Evebecause it saves them time as they do not need to prepare for the dinner orwash dishes, and they have time to go to the flower markets," says Liang.
Families in many parts of China typically sit in front of the TVafter dinner and watch the Spring Festival Gala presented by China CentralTelevision. But in Guangdong, especially in Guangzhou, the provincial capital,most families visit flower markets.
Set up in the open, the Spring Festival flower markets typicallyrun for three days ending on Spring Festival Eve. As the winter in the south isnot so severe, it is traditional for people in Guangdong to buy flowers fromthe markets to decorate their homes to welcome spring.
For many in Guangdong, bustling crowded flower markets are asymbol of the Spring Festival. But for some, such as Johnson Wong, the noise inthe kitchen reminds him of Spring Festival.
When Wong was a boy in the 1970s, he would wake up early on themorning of Spring Festival Eve to help his parents prepare dinner. He used tobe assigned the job of pushing the millstone to grind rice, to make rice cake.
He also remembers the dinner preparations. For instance, thechildren were forbidden from standing near the pot when the adults deep-friedthe jau gok, a dough snack. This was because it was believed that wishes wouldbe granted if they were spoken when putting the dough into the hot oil. Soadults would keep children away from the pot lest they said somethinginauspicious.
"I don't think young people today know about thesetraditions or have spent time preparing a Spring Festival Eve dinner together withfamily members, which is a pity," says Wong, a famous gourmet based inGuangzhou, and the president of the Guangdong Province Food Culture ResearchAssociation.
"I treasure the time spent with my family members preparingSpring Festival Eve dinner. Whether it is discussing how to cook a dish or justchatting about what happened in the past year, we communicate with familymembers," he says.
"For me, communication between family members is thehighlight of Spring Festival, whether we dine at home or out in a restaurant,whether we are in the south or in the north."
