Happy Year of the Mouse, Everyone!

Last Wednesday was the twenty-third day of the Twelfth Moon and for the Chinese, the beginning of New Year celebrations. My father took down the poster of the Kitchen God in a gesture of sending him up into the heavens to meet with the Great Jade Emperor.
My father was born in Manchuria, and there it was customary to send the Kitchen God into the sky, riding on horses made out of sorghum stalk. The god had been watching the household all year long, a witness to squabbling, gossiping, lying and perhaps stealing. Before the god’s effigy, temple and horses were set ablaze, sticky candy would be pressed into his mouth to keep him from tattling on family members when he appeared before the Jade Emperor. (The Kitchen God would return precisely at noon on the last day of the year.)

Next Wednesday will be New Year's Eve. and I know when my parents feast on huo guo, “fire pot,” my father’s eyes will invariably grow misty, thinking about the time when he was hungry as he trekked one thousand miles to escape the Communists or when the locusts swarmed across the provinces, eating up millet, sorghum, wheat and rice (and all my father had to eat were locust). Or the hunger due to floods and drought. Or the empty stomach because of war.
In the past two hundred years (almost as long as America has been a nation), the Chinese have suffered wars and upheaval: First Opium War, Arrow War, Taiping Rebellion, Sino-Japanese War, Fall of the Qing Dynasty, Civil War, Japanese Invasion, Soviet encroachment in Manchuria after the Japanese surrender, more civil war and the violence the Communists set upon their own people. My great grandfather died in the greatest famine known to mankind, unleasehed in the late 1958 by Mao Zedong's misguided Great Leap Forward which pulled farmers off their land.

Two days ago, I took my parents from Carmel to Ranch 99 in Cupertino, a supermarket filled with Chinese goodies, bringing them home with two shopping cart loads of food which included sixty luscious baozi, meat-filled steamed bun, roasted pig ears, and watermelon seeds to crack while telling winter tales. They had more than enough to accommodate the holiday which will last 23 days (until Lantern Festival, the fifteenths of the First Month).

My parents’ pantry and fridge are crammed beyond logic but this makes them feel cozy, secure and happy. It’s that layer of fat, the hoard of goodies that will barricade them from the cold and hunger they knew all too well in their youth.

*BWT, this is not the Year of the Rat. It is the Year of the Mouse. An unfortunate translation.

Message edited by its author, Feb 3, 2008, 1:45am.

My first post to this group, I just found it :). My, or better said our plan was to go to my wifes hometown ( 宜昌) over spring festival, but the snow made us change our plans. We currently live in Guilin so we didn' t have too much trouble with the weather, but most of the train lines through central China are still not operating. We are still soo much more lucky that the hundred of thousands of people without water or energy, or all the poor travellers that got stuck in the snow.
Anyway, we will will stay at home this year. While it is fine for me, it is the first time in 26 years that my wife is not with her family over this special time. I will try to cook some good German food for her :)

My heart bleeds for the millions of Chinese stuck in dank train stations. I've taken the 3rd class train from Beijing to Changsha--a veritable Dante's hell. To think of the crowds around New Year. Oh, my gosh. J_ipsen are you doing in Guilin? Never mind, I just visited your profile page. Keep us posted of your adventures in Dimsum Group!

Message edited by its author, Feb 3, 2008, 3:27pm.

Happy New Year!

Same all! Happy lunar new year!