Mahjong – 麻將 – má jiàng

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner.  Ever since I met my husband, I’ve spent almost all of my Thanksgiving with his side of the family.  Mostly because he grew up celebrating Thanksgiving, and that his family would actually serve turkey and have traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  As a little kid in Hong Kong, we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.  After moving to New York, my family celebrated Thanksgiving in Chinese style.  Chinese-Thanksgiving consist of a big dinner serving, surprise, Chinese food!  I don’t remember ever having Turkey, we would usually have chicken instead!  This is going to be a topic for another day.

There is one thing we always do as a family though, playing Mahjong, 麻將.  Whenever we have a big group of people around, we would play Mahjong.  It’s the way our family communicates with each other, over the Mahjong table.  Mahjong is very popular within the Chinese community, and it’s such a popular game that most people have played on the computer nowadays.  But I really see it as a social venue.  I grew up watching my mom play Mahjong.  So instead of going shopping with her friends, she sees her friends over the Mahjong table.  They get to talk about families, friends, news, celebrities, anything; however, it’s not always necessary to come up with topics because then you can also concentrate on playing the game too.

The Mahjong sound maybe noisy to some people, but to me, it’s one of the most endearing sound.  The sound of the tiles hitting each other, with lots of laughter and with lots of Ai-ya.

Double Ten Day – 雙十節 - shuāng shí jié

Happy National Day Taiwan!

Double Ten Day refers to the tenth day of the tenth month of the year, hence double ten. It is the National Day of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and celebrates the Wu-chuang Uprising of October 10, 1911, which led to the collapse of the last dynasty (Qing) in China. Most historians believe this to be a significant chapter in China’s political change, moving from an imperial system to a democratic one.

Today, because of the Chinese Civil War, which ended in 1949, this holiday is only celebrated in Taiwan and some oversea communities, but not in Mainland China.

In our home, comfort food means noodles and dumplings.  On any given day, I have a freezer full of the premade dumplings and dried noodles from the Asian market.  The other day, I decided to make my own dumplings.  No more frozen pot stickers  for my babies!   

Before my daughter came home from school, I made the filling and set it in the refrigerator for an hour so the flavors could meld together. 

That afternoon, we had a terrific mother daughter experience.  My beauty and I sat at the kitchen table and made dumpling together just as I did with my mother 35 years ago.  She lined up the dumpling wrappers and painted the water on the skins with her tiny fingers carefully wetting the entire perimeter.  I filled and folded the pot stickers.  She dipped the finished product into the cornstarch and laid them out onto a cookie sheet in straight rows.  We were a well-oiled machine. 

As we were doing this, a Chinese culture and language lesson popped in.  She started asking questions like how do you say dumpling in Chinese?  What are the words for table and chair?  We counted the dumplings, all 42 of them, first in English then Chinese (actually we counted them twice in Chinese because she had so much fun learning.) 

That night our family enjoyed the dumplings along with some baby bak choy for dinner.  The discussion turned to another Chinese topic, an article in the New York Times from the day before on paper sons from China.

Here is a recipe for some good mother/child Chinese bonding.

Pot Stickers

• 1 package of round flour dumpling skins
• Water
• Cornstarch in shallow bowl or plate

For filling:

• 1 lb ground pork or dark meat chicken
• ½ pound shrimp cut into ¼ inch pieces (about 10 large shrimp)
• 3 leaves of Napa cabbage finely dices (1/4 inch pieces)
• 6 rehydrated diced shitake mushrooms
• 10-15 chopped cilantro leaves  (I used a handful)
• 3 scallion stalks finely chopped
• 3 cloves of minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon shingtao wine
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Instructions:

1.  Mix all filling ingredients together.
2. Fill a small cup with water
3. Fill a small bowl with a little corn starch
4. Take a dumpling wrapper and wet the perimeter with water
5. Fill with a teaspoon of filling
6. Fold dumpling in half at center
7. Make 2 pleats on either sides of the center and seal
8. Dab the bottom of dumpling in the cornstarch and set aside for cooking.
9. Repeat until done.
10. Heat a frying pan on high heat
11. Once hot, add some cooking oil to coat the bottom of the pan
12. Place pot stickers inside and let the bottoms brown, about 2-3 minutes but keep checking as they may burn.
13. Once the bottoms have browned, cover the pan with a tight fitting lid and turn heat down to low. 
14. Pour a ¼ cup of water into the pan and let the dumplings simmer.
15. Once the water has evaporated serve and enjoy.

 *Filling can be made a few hours ahead

** A good butcher will gladly ground dark meat chicken for you.

National Day – 國慶節 – guó qìng jié

Today, The People’s Republic of China celebrates it’s 60th National Day, 國慶節 – guó qìng jié, the equavilent of the Independence Day in the U.S.

Besides the military parade, and the flag raising ceremony, the government has planned a huge fireworks display in Beijing, the capital city. It is said that this year’s fireworks will be twice as large and grand as the one showcased during the last Olympic, also in Beijing. Be sure to check out the Wall Street Jounal blog for up to date updates of this historical event.

The average Chinese citizen, however will not be present for the parade, most try to take advantage of the mandatory 1 week vacation to travel around the country. So bear in mind, do not visit China during the first week of October where all the hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions are over crowded unless you have to be in China for a reason. Of course, if you like crowds and wish to experience what 1.3 billion people feels like, this will be perfect.

Moon Festival day is always on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the year based on the Lunar calendar. This year, it will be this coming Saturday, October 3rd. Legend has it, that is the day when the moon is the fullest, and the brightest. To celebrate this special occasion, families often gather together for dinner, known as tuán yuán fàn before eating moon cakes and drinking tea in the courtyard to appreciate the natual beauty of the moon.

For children, however, the lanterns are usually the highlight of the evening. Oftentimes, the kids will make their own, using wire, rice paper, and glue to create art master pieces of pandas, rabbits, dragons, snakes, etc. In some areas, there are also competitions for the best lantern!

This year, you can take part in this special celebration with your children by decorating a lantern for the Moon Festival similar to the one on the left. Click here to buy.

Museum – 博物館 – bó wù guǎn

In honor of the reopening of The Museum of Chinese in America in NYC, I thought we should learn what museum is in Chinese. Visiting museums is always a big hit in my family. My kids love the Childrens Museum for all the hands on exibits, they also love the Museum of Natural History for that big Dinosaurs display. Even at the Museum of Modern Arts, they were able to amuse themselves with the big helicopter inside. We will be going to this newly reopened MOCA soon. I am sure they will take pride in knowing all the famous Chinese Americans!

To learn more, you can also read a review in today’s NY Times.

We celebrated my mom’s sixty-sixth birthday during our visit to California this summer.  In our family, along with many others from the Shanghai/Yangtze Delta region of China, the sixty-sixth has always been cause for major celebration since, by traditional standards, it is a milestone for a long, full life.  Legend has it that the guardian of the after-life will come calling soon after a person reaches this milestone.  To ward off this unwanted visit, a person has to eat sixty-six pieces of meat.  Somehow, this mass consumption of meat renders the person undesirable.

So, in the spirit of preservation, my sister and I both prepared dishes with sixty-six pieces of meat.  Mine was  紅燒, or soy sauce braised (a very traditional Shanghai method) while my sister sliced a grilled steak into sixty-six pieces.  With all the meat consumed, let’s hope my mother lives a doubly-long life!