Cultural Expedition

For those of you who may not know, I grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and we lived there for 9 years, 9 amazing years. Of all the places I have lived, this is my favourite. It will always have a big piece of my heart and it draws my family back almost every year. There is something so magnetic about the culture, the food, the shopping, the people, everything really. This really deserves a whole blog post of its own as a big part of who I am is a result of the life I led there and the experiences I had.

While living in KL it became a way of life to experience different cultures and their traditions. We would always have school holidays for Hari Raya and Chinese New Year for example. These traditions were so normal for me growing up, that I took them for granted and I realized last week that I don't know that much about them.  You see I was invited by my Singaporean friend Tong, to a Chinese New Year carnival that she had helped to organize with the Singaporean society. When Samuel and I arrived there, I realized how little I knew about this amazing and interesting celebration.

This was also a great time for me to practice a different style of photography as I really have only done portraits up until now and even then only a few. I realized how hard it is to take pictures in a crowded place where everyone and their mother is out to ruin your shot! But I loved it, and hopefully the pictures are okay! I also had to deal with really bad lighting and consequently very high ISOs at some points but I'm learning and these challenges help me.

I decided that instead of me trying to explain all of the ins and outs of the Chinese New Year celebrations, it would be more interesting, and more importantly, accurate, if Tong did the honours. So she has kindly done a Question and Answer with me to give us more of an insight. I believe it is so important to understand and embrace other cultures and never take for granted what we can learn from other people. 

Q: Can you give us an overview of what Chinese New Year is and what it means to people?

Chinese New Year is the traditional festival where we celebrate the coming of the new year on the lunar calendar. It lasts for 15 days. For traditional Chinese families, we have reunion dinner with the family (immediate or extended) on New Year's Eve with a huge feast. From Day 1 onwards, we will go visiting with mandarin oranges that signify prosperity (because in mandarin, mandarin oranges have similar pronunciation as prosperity). The youngsters will wish the elders good health and luck, while the elders will wish the youngsters good results in school and healthy growing and such. Then they will give us red packets (traditionally known as angpaos) which contain money. You are entitled to receive red packets as long as you are single and not married! Once you get married, it's your turn to distribute them! On Day 15 which is the last day, we will eat glutinous rice balls (traditionally known as tangyuan) which signifies reunion and harmony in the family for the year. 

Q: Why is each year represented by an animal?

The Chinese zodiac has 12 animals. It runs in a cycle and the animals are in the order Rat, Cow, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Chicken, Dog, Pig. It originated from some folklore that the animals had a race to determine the order of the animals.

Q: Tell us about Yu Sheng and what is the significance and tradition behind it? Also, what food is used to make it?

Traditionally, it is to be eaten on the 7th day of Chinese New Year, but it has evolved over the years so we eat it anytime when we gather within the 15 days. It is made from fish (the most important ingredient, because in Chinese saying, it signifies the accumulation of excess valuable things that we bring over to the new year), carrots, radish, chilli, flour crackers, sweet sauce, five spice powder, lime juice etc. It is extremely colourful and whenever we add in an ingredient into the big plate we have to say something auspicious that is related to its look or taste or pronunciation (e.g. when adding sweet sauce we will wish for sweet marriages etc.). And after we add everything, we will all hold our chopsticks and mix everything together as high as possible to signify rising assets/promotions/improvements, and also we have to say all the auspicious phrases every time we raise our chopsticks. It can get quite messy, but it's really fun and noisy.

Q: What's it like moving from Singaporean culture to English culture? What do you find so different about the people and ways of life?

English culture is very different for me because I come from a traditional family that is very much influenced by the Chinese culture. When I first came over the most difficult thing for me to get used to was the accents of the people, as well as for me to adapt to the accent in order to be understood. It's quite interesting that we are speaking the same language but it's so hard for us to understand each other. Also people here are very open-minded to sharing, especially with like love, political and sexual issues. But in Singapore there's not so much freedom of speech so I was a bit overwhelmed at first. But I've gotten used to it now so as much as I miss home and my family I do enjoy myself here!

Thanks Tong!

We were welcomed with a handful of oranges taken from this glorious pile!

There was lots of different types of food on offer; this stand sold Gyozas which are steamed dumplings and can often have a variety of fillings. They were cooked in this steamer and the served with soya sauce. Yum!

This young lady was a machine with her chopsticks!

There were also some crazy martial arts acts. It was really difficult for me to get my shutter speed fast enough to freeze the action as the light was so bad. Oh well I gave it a shot!

This guy had a look of death in his eyes! Check out some of the lovely decorations.

I noticed this poster stuck to the floor; it doesn't really have anything to do with Chinese New Year and was put there by the University but I thought it most fitting for this post and for life in general really.

Back to food as you know how much I love it! This stall was serving eggs boiled in tea or "Tea Leaf Eggs". I didn't get to try one but they look most interesting.

I think this photo captured the vibe of the afternoon; everyone was enjoying themselves and the food!

This little girl was so cute! Although from the look on her face I gather she thought I was nuts, which of course I am.

Oh I love food!

Towards the end of the afternoon everyone commenced the Yu Sheng (see Tong's explanation above). This was really crazy to watch; not only did the line of food go on forever but the sheer speed of the chopsticks was enough to make your eyes go funny...so much so my lens could barely find a focus point! This first picture is of Tong setting up.

Lastly here is Tong and me with our nifty chopsticks right before Yu Sheng started!

I also wanted to shout from the rooftops that our wedding is in the current issue of Cosmopolitan Bride magazine and includes lots of pics and an interview with yours truly. I will hopefully blog some photos if I can confirm that it's not a violation of copyright. If you can't contain your excitement nor or unable to wait for me to post, head to a news agent (that's if you're UK based of course!).

Fried Rice

I will end with a recipe for a Chinese dish; Chinese food is one of my absolute favourites and I grew up eating some of the best Chinese food around. I plan on doing lots of Asian recipes as I believe it's the best food in the world so I thought I would start off with a really easy recipe for Fried Rice from Kylie Kwong. It's really simple and good way to get started with Chinese cooking. Preferably you would cook this in a wok, however, if you don't have one a big frying pan will do. Always let the pan get extremely hot before cooking. Another handy tip with wok style cooking is to get ALL your ingredients chopped and ready and the sauces into bowls. Why? Well Chinese cooking takes very little time and you won't have enough time to chop and cook at the same time. It makes life much easier, try it!

This recipe calls for a lot of oil...I find it unnecessary and I never use it all. If you use a non-stick pan you definitely don't need to. So for the first step of the recipe try a tablespoon and then another tablespoon when you add the next batch. As I haven't adapted this recipe, I have included the link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/deliciousfriedrice_72056.shtml

Have a lovely weekend everyone, feel free to comment below.

xx