Yesterday was Lunar 7th day, the Human birthday or everyone birthday. It was also Li Chun ?? day which indicates the arrival of Spring. I took home vegetarian yu sheng which is a dish of various shredded vegetables, crackers and topped with plum sauce. A traditional yu sheng is topped with raw fish. But since this is vegetarian yu sheng, Sufood vegetarian restaurant replaced it with abalone mushroom. So with my family in the evening, we tossed the yu sheng and shouted auspicious words like ????. Prior to tossing yu sheng, I had the special vegetable dish comprising of 7 different vegetables prepared by my mum. This is a Teochew (??) tradition. In the morning, I deposited some money to my bank account for a prosperous year. Well after depositing the money, I felt happy.
After tossing yu sheng, a tradition commonly practiced in Singapore, we went to my mum's sister home. At her home, we had a feast of pizza, fried bee hoon, fried chicken and we also tossed yu sheng, this time topped with raw salmon fish. There were also other snacks.
My maternal grandmother had 6 sons and 7 daughters. However due to poverty, a daughter was sent for adoption. So currently I have 5 uncles (one passed on) and 5 aunties. My favorite Aunty is the youngest. Anyway in this gathering, for the first time, my youngest uncle shared a lot about himself and his wife also shared a lot . For the first time, I realized my uncle is really a good storyteller and humorous person. My uncle and his wife shared with me tips on their Hong Kong trip since I told them that I be traveling to Hong Kong solo this March. They advised me not to eat their fried noodles as it was horrible. But they recommended their dim sum and dessert.
Well, how I wish my other aunties and uncles would join in the gathering. After both my grandparents passed on, some uncle and aunty did not attend the Chinese New Year gathering. I do hope they will attend in next year Chinese New Year gathering. Chinese new Year is the time to strengthen kinship bond.
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