Discovering Old — and New — Chinese New Year Traditions in Taipei
The author on the right, second from the bottom, and the rest of her big, happy family at New Year’s Eve dinner in Taipei (Charlie Grosso)
Yesterday began the Chinese New Year, marking the start of the lunar calendar and kicking off a weeklong celebration of the Year of the Sheep, according to the Chinese Zodiacs. Also known as the Spring Festival, it’s the biggest Chinese holiday and it’s loaded with significance — an opportunity to discard the old and reboot anew.Everyone in China is on the move leading up to the New Year, traveling to spend time with loved ones. For me, it’s the first time in two decades that I have gone home to Taipei to have New Year’s Eve dinner with my family.
It’s a first, and I am nostalgic.
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Growing up, Chinese New Year was always my favorite holiday. All of my aunts, uncles, and cousins would come home for a visit. We would start the year with new clothes and new intentions, so that meant my mom would buy me a pretty outfit and a new coat. She was partial to pink, but one year I got a red coat, which I especially loved.
Traditional Chinese New Year cakes. (Juliana Phang/Flickr)
As with many cultures, Chinese holidays are also food-centric. The New Year celebrations always brought endless sweets and snack cakes, nuts, and pickled plums. As the children played hide-and-seek, my grandmother and the aunties were busy in the kitchen making the final preparations for dinner. It used to take my grandmother days to collect and ready all the ingredients for the big feast. There would be treats and specialties that we wouldn’t get any other time of the year.
My grandma would always make smoked fish in sauce, a Shanghai specialty. The fish was sliced into sections with the skin and bones, slowly fried in vegetable oil until most of the moisture had evaporated and the meat was dense and jerky-like. A mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and vinegar was added to pan, slowly coating the fish until it was black and shiny. It took certain patience and skill to get the sauce to coat the fish until it was sticky and delicious. There would be buns filled with sweet red bean paste. Grandma would start on the bean paste a week in advance and it was something of a legend amongst friends and neighbors. Everyone would beg her to make extra so they could fill their sweet buns and cakes with her magic. The secret to her bean paste was lard, she told me once.
Rice cakes bring growth and advancement. (Charlie Grosso)
Since nearly everything is symbolic in traditional Chinese culture, of course the much of the food my grandmother served for Chinese New Year dinner was as well to start the year with prosperity, health, and luck. The whole fish represented prosperity and unity; long noodles were for a long life. Rice cakes (stir-fried with Napa cabbage and pork) brought growth and advancement. Fried spring rolls and egg dumplings represented the gold bricks and nuggets of Imperial times. Each year all the women in family would follow tradition and make these delicious good omens with love.
So this year, when I went home to Taipei after decades, I wanted to re-live all those cherished childhood memories and savor these favorite dishes I’ve been dreaming about.
“Should we go over to grandma’s and help with the cooking?” I asked my mother three days before New Year Eve.
“We don’t make all the dishes anymore. Your aunt arranges for something from a nearby restaurant,” my mom replied.
I am stunned. What about tradition?
“It’s too much trouble. We have to feed 20 people. Now you can buy everything at the market, or just order it. It’s easier on everyone — your grandma especially.”
“I know but…” I protested. I wasn’t just going to show up and eat. I was going to help in the kitchen, perhaps even learn to make a dish or two from my grandma, mom, and aunties.
Or I was just going to shop for pre-prepared food with them.
Market madness in Taipei (Charlie Grosso)
The day before New Year Eve, we headed to Nenmen Market, one of the biggest markets in Taipei. To my dismay, we weren’t the only family buying New Year’s Eve dinner pre-made. The market was packed, and making our way through took a few sharp elbows and a lot determination. Vendors in the stalls sold every dish imaginable, all already cooked — we would just have to heat it up. A girl in the corner was making egg dumplings; the shop across the way had rice cakes from both Northern and Southern China. A woman wearing dark sunglasses was rolling dough balls on a hot griddle for rice paper to make the spring rolls. An old man in the corner made sweet buns with red bean paste shaped like bunny rabbits.
I would have loved these adorably decorated buns when I was a kid. But now, I would gladly trade cute animals for just another taste of my Grandma’s cooking. Never again will the hands gingerly picking up the rice paper wrappers from the griddle be my Grandmother’s, I thought. No longer will my mom stand at grandma’s side folding spring rolls. We will buy the rice paper from now on.
I braced myself for a pre-fab, re-heated dinner, accepting defeat, chalking it up to changing times and all.
Home cooking prevails! (Charlie Grosso)
Then I got home. When I arrived at my uncle’s house, everyone was busy in the kitchen, folding and stir-frying.
“What happened to ordering in for dinner?” I ask one of my aunts. “We were a bit disorganized and the restaurant was over-booked. We had to cook. It’s better this way isn’t it?” she says. Yes. Serendipity intervened; we would have a traditional Chinese New Year after all.
Giant prawns abound. (Charlie Grosso)
Just like in my dreams, like in my childhood, there were egg dumplings and spring rolls, stir-fried rice cakes and braised pork belly. There were sweet sausages, smoked beef, and giant prawns. It wasn’t exactly how I remembered it — in lieu of a whole fish, my uncle rolled out a homemade pastry crust and made baked salmon with sautéed spinach in a pastry crust — but it was delicious. The table groaned with the weight of the new and the old.
It’s really all about family, not the food. (Charlie Grosso)
Nothing tasted exactly as I had remembered it — my grandmother no longer heads up the kitchen. She is 87 years old after all. I doubt any meal would ever satisfy the memory I’ve held tight for the last 20 years; time and nostalgia has elevated New Year’s Eve dinner to a nearly impossible to reach pedestal. But the truth is what I really longed for all along is home and family, to end one year and start the next with them.
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