The Best Food to Celebrate Chinese New Year with Is...

No matter where we are, rich or poor, we all strive to keep family together and pass on traditions to the next generation.

Photo by Alex Hu on Unsplash

Most people have already celebrated the arrival of a new year more than two weeks ago. But for many others, including myself, the REAL new year starts this Sunday, January 22nd. It will be the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit. 

Chinese New Year is a fifteen-day celebration with multifold rituals and good food. My favorite Chinese New Year dish is Jiaozi, Chinese dumplings.  

My dad is from northern China, where wheat is the stable food and dumplings are a must-have dish for the Chinese New Year celebration. Upon his college graduation, the government assigned him to work for a science institute in Southwest China, and the local diet was quite different from what he was used to. He met my mother, a southerner who grew up celebrating Chinese New Year with sweet rice balls rather than dumplings. Mom didn't know how to make dumplings when she married dad. My dad had to learn how to make his own to satisfy his craving for dumplings. By the time I was born, dad had plenty of practice, and he converted mom and my older siblings into dumpling lovers. 

As long as I can remember, making dumplings has always been a family activity. On New Year's eve, Dad would start making the dough in the early afternoon. He would carefully mix warm water and flour in a big bowl, knead it into a soft dough, then cover it with a wet towel to let the dough sit until it is pliable.

Mom was always responsible for making the filling. The typical dumpling filling consists of ground pork and vegetables such as cabbages or leeks. One could tell a family's economic situation by the filling's meat-to-vegetable ratio. When life was difficult, our dumplings were filled with cabbages. Later, as China launched economic reform and our standard of living improved, mom would add meat, shrimp, mushrooms, and eggs to the filling, along with vegetables. She told me this type of filling called "Sanxian," or "three delicacies" in Chinese (Here is a recipe if you'd like to try). 

Once the dough gained enough elasticity, dad divided the dough into a dozen smaller portions. He spread flour on the kitchen table, took one small part of the dough, and rolled it into a long stick. He then cut the stick into the smaller portion and turned each piece into a perfectly round dumpling skin with a wooden rolling pin (he also ensured I knew that the rolling pin was older than me). My dad is an engineer by training, so it was not surprising that the dumpling skins he produced all had the same shape and size.

As I said, making dumplings was a family activity. After dad made the dumpling skins, mom, my siblings, and I each took a dumpling skin. Mom taught us to place only a small spoon full of fillings in the dumpling skin's center, touch the edge of the skin with a bit of water, and fold the skin diagonally into a crescent shape as if wrapping a blanket over a baby. It is essential to press the edges together to seal the filling, so the dumpling doesn't come apart when cooked. Otherwise, it would be a bad omen. Making dumplings was one of the few occasions we kids could create a mess without getting scolded because it is bad luck to have someone crying during new year’s festivities.

Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

While making dumplings, my parents often recounted funny things my siblings and I did when we were younger. We laughed so much that the kitchen table in the tiny one-bedroom apartment was transformed into the happiest place in the world.

Mom always made one special dumpling by filling it with hard candy, and she said whoever ate it would have the best luck in the new year. My brother and I often tried to put unique marks on that dumpling (my older sister was too mature to participate in kids' games like this). But mom always found a way to erase our mark so no one could tell which dumpling was the chosen one. Over the years, I did manage to find the sweet dumpling on my plate a few times and had my share of good luck.

According to Chinese custom, it is best not to cook anything for the first three days of the new year because touching a knife or starting a fire are all regarded as activities that would bring bad luck. So we usually made enough dumplings on New Year's eve to last a week because Since we didn't have a fridge for many years, we stored the extra dumplings in a jar and left them outside so nature would keep them frozen.

By the way, if you are tired of hearing me say good and bad luck, please know that the Chinese are very superstitious, and all these Chinese New Year customs have existed for hundreds or even thousands of years. As youngsters, we learned long ago to refrain from arguing with our elders about whether these customs make sense. Instead, we follow the tradition, observe the customs, and make everyone else happy. After all, "A happy family is but an earlier heaven."

New Year's Eve was the only time we kids were allowed to stay past midnight. When the clock struck midnight, mom would boil a pot of water and cook some dumplings. Dad said since the dumplings were shaped like ancient Chinese money, having dumplings as the first meal in the new year would bring us good fortune.

Besides Chinese New Year, my family also made dumplings together before any family member had to travel as a way of praying for good luck and safe travels. Naturally, my last meal at home before I left for America was dumplings. Dad even packed the family rolling pin in my luggage. He hoped that I would make dumplings for myself to ease my homesickness. I had to admit that other than making a few pancakes with the rolling pin, I never used it to make dumpling wraps.

My official excuse is that making dumplings from scratch is too time-consuming. But deep down, I knew making dumplings would only worsen my homesickness. How do I replicate something that my family used to do? Nowadays, when I feel homesick, I get frozen dumplings from grocery stores. The frozen ones never taste as good as the ones my parents made because homemade dumpling skins have a tender and chewy texture that frozen ones can never reproduce.

In the film "Crazy Rich Asians," one of my favorite scenes was when Nick's family invited Rachel to make dumplings with them. We learned from the movie that Nick's family is super wealthy, so they could have dumplings made by the best chef in the world delivered to them. Yet, they chose to do it themselves. For Chinese, no matter where we are, rich or poor, we all strive to keep family together and pass on traditions to the next generation. Dumplings symbolize family, love, and, yes, good luck. 

Happy New Year, everyone! May the Year of the Rabbit bring you and your family much joy and many good fortunes!