The Lunar New Year has many traditions associated with it, and while many of these are gradually being thrown out the window by a generation too preoccupied to bother, the New Year's Eve family dinner remains entrenched in Taiwanese society. All kinds of dishes, many of them bad for the waistline and blood pressure, are essential to see in the New Year properly, for, as we are told, each dish has important symbolic significance.
The first dish on a New Year's Eve menu is often a cold mixed platter, usually with a choice of five types of food. Regularly to be seen are haizhepi (海哲皮), shrimp, stewed beef, tripe and cold-cuts of chicken. It's the number of choices rather than what's on the plate that is significant in this case. This dish is a reference to the phrase "may you be granted the five blessing" (五福臨門, wufulinmen), a commonly used auspicious saying. There is some debate as to exactly what the five blessings are, but the most commonly accepted version includes longevity, prosperity, official status, joy and numerous offspring.
Fish is an absolute must at the New Year's Eve table, largely because of a homophone. The word fish (魚, yu) sounds the same as "surplus" (餘, yu), so the eating of fish represents the hope that the following year will be one of abundance. The type of fish and the manner in which it is cooked are left to the discretion of the chef.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PRESIDENT CONVENIENCE STORES
A whole chicken is also often thought a necessary part of the meal. This is partly due to a kind of rhyming aphorism in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), "Eat a chicken, establish a home" (吃雞起家, chiah ke, khi ke), which doesn't make a lot of sense in English when translated directly, but given that the holiday is a time for families to get together, the concept of family unity can be read into almost anything. (Meatballs are another popular way of expressing this in the language of food, simply because they are round.) The use of specially bred black-boned chickens gives the dish additional cachet, as this variety is thought to have medicinal properties that will fortify the body against winter weather.
Fortunately, given the excess of fish and meat that is served up at most Lunar New Year's Eve dinners, a number of vegetables also have auspicious references.
Mustard greens are commonly consumed during the holiday because in Chinese they are called "long years vegetable" (長年菜, changniancai), an auspicious reference to living to a ripe old age.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PRESIDENT CONVENIENCE STORES
Fat choy (髮菜), also known as hair moss (Latin name: Nostoc flagelliforme), a dried fungus harvested in the high deserts of Central Asia, is another common food. It's expensive, adding a certain prestige, but the main reason for its inclusion is that in Cantonese, the name of the vegetable is a homophone for "get rich," which is presumably what everybody is hoping to do as soon as the festivities are over.
It's not only expensive foods that make the cut; the radish is also traditionally part of the meal. In Hoklo, radish (菜頭, chhai-thau) is a homophone for "good fortune" (好彩頭 ho-chhai-thau). To ensure that the radish isn't embarrassed because of its humble origins, it's often served as radish cake, which dresses the vegetable up with shrimp, dried mushrooms and other more costly ingredients.
These are just some of the associations between food and folklore that are brought to the fore over the Lunar New Year, but the ultimate demand is that the food be exotic and varied. For this reason, one of the most popular choices is the dish "Buddha jumps over the wall" (佛跳牆, fotiaoqiang), a Minnan (閩南) stew or soup made of quail eggs, bamboo shoots, scallops, sea cucumbers, abalone, shark fin, chicken, ham, pork tendon, ginseng, mushrooms and taro, all cooked in a wine-based soup. It got its name from a story in which a Buddhist monk forgot his vows (which include not eating meat) and jumped over a garden wall to get a taste of this dish. The concoction comes in many forms and ranges in price from a few hundred NT dollars to many thousands. This show-off stew has no particular traditional relationship with the Lunar New Year other than providing almost limitless opportunities for the addition of pricey and exotic ingredients.
Preparing all of this food entails a good deal of cooking, and few families in urban centers have time to make such elaborate preparations. According to a study commissioned by the President Chain Stores (統一超商), which operates the 7-Eleven convenience store franchise, 75 percent of families in Taiwan now get takeout for New Year's Eve. The company has responded, as has virtually every other convenience store and hypermarket chain, with a huge selection of pre-ordered, pre-cooked and pre-packaged banquets. Restaurants, too, are currently accepting bookings and takeout orders for New Year's Eve foods and if you are looking to celebrate in traditional style without the hassle of cooking yourself, you should probably start getting your orders in now.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the country’s other political groups dare not offend religious groups, says Chen Lih-ming (陳立民), founder of the Taiwan Anti-Religion Alliance (台灣反宗教者聯盟). “It’s the same in other democracies, of course, but because political struggles in Taiwan are extraordinarily fierce, you’ll see candidates visiting several temples each day ahead of elections. That adds impetus to religion here,” says the retired college lecturer. In Japan’s most recent election, the Liberal Democratic Party lost many votes because of its ties to the Unification Church (“the Moonies”). Chen contrasts the progress made by anti-religion movements in
Last week the State Department made several small changes to its Web information on Taiwan. First, it removed a statement saying that the US “does not support Taiwan independence.” The current statement now reads: “We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, free from coercion, in a manner acceptable to the people on both sides of the Strait.” In 2022 the administration of Joe Biden also removed that verbiage, but after a month of pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), reinstated it. The American
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus convener Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) and some in the deep blue camp seem determined to ensure many of the recall campaigns against their lawmakers succeed. Widely known as the “King of Hualien,” Fu also appears to have become the king of the KMT. In theory, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) outranks him, but Han is supposed to be even-handed in negotiations between party caucuses — the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) says he is not — and Fu has been outright ignoring Han. Party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) isn’t taking the lead on anything while Fu
Feb 24 to March 2 It’s said that the entire nation came to a standstill every time The Scholar Swordsman (雲州大儒俠) appeared on television. Children skipped school, farmers left the fields and workers went home to watch their hero Shih Yen-wen (史艷文) rid the world of evil in the 30-minute daily glove puppetry show. Even those who didn’t speak Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) were hooked. Running from March 2, 1970 until the government banned it in 1974, the show made Shih a household name and breathed new life into the faltering traditional puppetry industry. It wasn’t the first
RSS