Chinese New Year

I live in Tübingen, a rather international German city despite its relatively small size, and there are a number of Chinese families living in our area. With my mother’s help, these families got together and organized a New Year celebration on the 21^st of February that we were all invited to attend!

At midday on Saturday we made our way over to the gathering place to find it overrun with adorable, cheery-faced Chinese kids – I don’t think a single one of them was over the age of eight! So sweet.
The parents were either hanging up decorations (like this, for example) or preparing dough and fillings for dumplings, which would then be prepared by everyone together – guests included!

Just before we started making dumplings, I realized I hadn’t thought to bring a camera and instead drew this with the only pen I could find. There were a lot more tables and a lot more people than pictured here!

Then people started gathering around the tables with mounds of dough and minced meat or carrot fillings; chopping, rolling and wrapping, and I joined some of my siblings at a table with some Chinese ladies. It was my first time wrapping dumplings, and a lady I already knew from one of Mom’s English groups, Dan (yes, that’s her real name), showed me the trick to wrapping Chinese dumplings. I tried to draw the process, but was unsure how to properly show the trick to folding over the dough. You can check out a blog post with many excellent photos here!

One of the Chinese ladies liked it so much that she took a photo. It’s so poorly drawn, though!

There were so many dumplings to be wrapped that finished and cooked (boiled) dumplings were being brought out even as we wrapped more – but oh, were they good! The meat filling had celery in it, which I typically don’t like but enjoyed in the dumpling, and the carrot filling was equally delicious. To dip we had what I believe was a soy sauce and vinegar dip, with garlic added for a bit of extra zing. There were side dishes of radish salad and cold rice noodles.

In Korea, they say that wrapping beautiful dumplings for the New Year means that you’ll have beautiful daughters; I don’t know if it applies to Chinese dumplings wrapped shortly after the New Year, but Anastasia and my dumplings were very beautiful indeed! Interestingly, Chinese dumplings supposedly symbolize wealth because their shape is similar to that of a Chinese sycee – a gold or silver ingot currency used in China until the 20^th century.

After lunch we were in for a little show – some members of a nearby Wu Shu academy came by to do an authentic dragon dance and various fight sequences with bare hands (and lots of kicks) or a variety of bladed weapons (with very flexible metal blades). The teacher that accompanied the (clearly not Chinese) students was Master Zhuo Haojun, who is a highly qualified Wu Shu trainer. Having not only won the Wu Shu World Championships (back in 1994), he has worked as a professional stuntman in Kung Fu movies (doubling even for such well-known names as Jet Li) and is the trainer of the German national team. We didn’t know all that in advance, but as soon as we first saw him move it was clear that he was extremely competent, and we would have loved to see more! I think his sister, who is equally well-qualified and founded the academy in Tübingen, was also there, but she mainly remained in the background, letting her brother take the spotlight. 

That’s the two of them there!

I think Dominic and I are both tempted to join a course at their academy – I particularly liked the loud slaps and stamps, especially when they’d do a high kick, slapping their foot loudly as it sped over their head, then bring it down with a loud stamp. It made for a very powerful rhythm.

That was my experience at the Chinese New Year celebration! 2015 is the year of the goat – or the sheep, or ram, depending on region or preference. The Chinese word yáng refers to both goats and sheep, and apparently the zodiacal yáng is more likely to be thought of as a goat in the south and a sheep in the north in China. 

The Year of the Sheep is believed to be a year of promise and prosperity, and the Sheep reflects the Earth and Yin: A passive or female principle, covert and shaded, soft and yielding. This year is considered a good one for family and creativity. Sounds perfect to me!