Symbolic food a key ingredient in lunar new year celebrations
Glutinous rice cakes symbolize advancement and growth
Inside New Town bakery, hungry diners order the pork buns and apple tarts the iconic Vancouver Chinatown bakery is known for. But in late January, something else was flying off the shelves: glutinous rice cakes.
Made of three basic ingredients — brown sugar, water, rice flour —it’s a humble, unassuming dessert, but a popular treat during lunar new year, which this year falls on Feb. 5, the first day of the Year of the Pig.
“It’s called nian gao,” said Robert Sung, a third-generation Chinese-Canadian who offers guided culinary tours in the historic neighbourhood.
“Nian” sounds like the Mandarin-language word for “year” and “gao” means “cake” and “high.” Put together, the rice cake symbolizes advancement and growth, he explained. Some bakeries serve nian gao in the shape of a 3D fish —a double whammy of good fortune as the word for fish is a homonym for surplus.
The lunar new year, also called the spring festival, heralds the coming spring. For many Chinese people, the new year signifies a new beginning and a chance for a fresh start. To prepare, people clean the house, pay off debts, and gather with family and friends over a lavish meal with foods steeped with symbolism.
“Each piece of food has a metaphorical meaning of the positive attributes of health, wealth and happiness,” usually based on pronunciation and appearance, said Sung.
A roasted duck or a whole chicken, for example, symbolizes wholeness and prosperity. Dumplings are popular because their shape resembles ingots, while golden fried spring rolls look like gold bars. Noodles signify long life, so it’s important to slurp them unbroken.
On a recent tour around Chinatown, Sung takes a reporter to some of its longtime shops and eateries to showcase food and ingredients.
At the Guo Hua medicinal store on Main Street, Sung reached into a bin to get dried hair moss called fat choy, which sounds like “prosperity.” An iodine-rich algae, it has the texture of coarse hair when dry. But when soaked, it becomes soft and finer, and is usually eaten in soups or stews.
Later, Sung points to bags of bok choy, which is used as the “mane” in “lion’s head,” essentially a meatball-and-veggie dish, but with a more dramatic, auspicious name.
At Hung Win Seafood on Gore Street, the tanks will soon be full of live fish. Fish, which represent abundance and prosperity, are usually served whole at the end of the meal.
Traditionally, diners would feast on one side, then take the bone off to get to the meat on the other side. Flipping it over is a no-no, warned Sung. “Turning it upside down means you’re tossing your luck away.”
The tour around Chinatown reveals an evolving neighbourhood.
The stores, while lively and busy, are dwindling. A 2017 report by the Hua Foundation, a non-profit based in Chinatown, has found that the neighbourhood has lost half of its “culturally appropriate fresh food assets,” including produce stores and butcher shops, between 2009 and 2016.
There’s a movement afoot to revitalize Chinese food businesses in Chinatown, such as a thriving CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program selling veggie boxes containing Chinese vegetables like pea tips and bok choys, and summer events and festivals that showcase traditional Chinese food with a modern twist.
What is the Year of the Pig going to be like? Depends on who you ask.
Expect a year filled with conflict and turbulence, said Richmond-based fortune teller and feng shui master Sherman Tai.
“This is not a good year. It’s a lot of uncertainty and fighting,” he said.
Pigs are stubborn animals with a selfish streak who tend to think only of their own circle. They’re also clean and meticulous creatures and, like the pigs in 1984, they like to take control and assume leadership.
Prospects for the Canadian economy are dim, said Tai, who predicts the continuing slide in sales activity and property prices in Metro Vancouver, particularly Richmond, West Vancouver and the Vancouver westside.
He also believes the Canadian dollar will weaken by three to five per cent, not necessarily a negative, said Tai, as it could attract investment.
People who are born in the years of the snake and the ox should be cautious this year, while those born in the years of the tiger, rabbit, goat and horse, which jive well with the pig, have rosier forecasts.
To neutralize the negativity, Tai’s advice is to be more conservative, less aggressive, don’t change jobs, be safe, and don’t over promise as it may interfere with your luck.
In contrast, novelist Jen Sookfong Lee, who just released her second children’s book, The Animals of Chinese New Year, has a more optimistic take on the year.
“The pig’s characteristics are kind, gentle, empathetic, but also prosperous,” said Lee. “But unlike some other signs, the pig’s prosperity comes often from acts of kindness and doing things that are ethical.”
Lee, who has had a personal interest in the Chinese zodiac for years, ventured that the new year isn’t going to be too bad. There will be progress and change, “solid foundational change” that will lay the groundwork for bigger changes in future years, she said, not “fireworks change.”
“My read on it — and I’m sure there’s another astrologer who would disagree — is that this is going to be a good year for people.”