Shabbat Dinner Menu for 15: Egg drop soup with crunchy noodles, Stir Fried Vegetables, Dan Dan Noodles, Roasted Chicken with Duck Sauce, Garlic Broccoli, Five-Spice Glazed Salmon, Mandarin Oranges and Almond Cookies.
This is not merely a Chinese-themed Shabbat for us. This is our Chinese-themed life.
It’s a bit hectic here now. Tonight can best be described as essentially erev Chinese New Year. It’s a half-day for work and school. Even the supermarkets will close early. And because it’s the Lunar New Year, it of course is also Rosh Chodesh (and it’s my turn to host). The rhythms of the two traditions seem to naturally fit together.
For Rosh Hashanah we make amends. For the Gregorian calendar New Year, we sometimes feel compelled to make resolutions. By Chinese New Year, we merely make plans and merriment.
In Hong Kong, as in other parts of China, Chinese New Year (referred to as the Lunar New Year) is the focal point of the season rather than Christmas and that is certainly a welcome change for us. This is a festival that we as Jews can fully participate in.
Children go to school in traditional Chinese dress before the festival, a custom that the Jewish Day School here fully embraces too and there is nothing cuter than a room full of toddlers in brightly colored silk Chinese costumes with kippot on too.
My children make colorful cards and decorations complete with Chinese calligraphy in class. We add the new ones to the growing pile of decorations which we take out annually to decorate our home. I even managed to buy a banner this year that carries wishes for honey and sweetness, one that I will now use on Rosh Hashanah as well.
We join the millions of locals who rush to the holiday fairs and outdoor markets, where delicate orchids, curly bamboo and peach blossoms are all sold to bring fortune and luck in the New Year. We too again buy a new orchid, complete with hanging miniature red lanterns, for our home. (With my limited horticulture skills, though, luck for our orchid will be just surviving the taxi ride home.)
Businesses all close and families gather together. A schedule-free four day weekend is much welcome in our hectic city lives. For the children it’s a full week off though. I make plans to bake traditional egg tarts (kosher, of course) one afternoon with a friend as an activity for our younger children. We will all run from one lion dance performance to another.
The Chinese festivals have many similarities to our own Jewish traditions. They too follow the moon and are deeply rooted in ancient tradition. Chinese New Year traditions such as sweeping and thereby casting away the bad, wearing new outfits in purposefully chosen symbolic colors, giving gifts of money in denominations that are lucky and abstaining from haircuts are all things we can certainly relate to.
While as Jews New Years is filled with apples and honey and pomegranates, for Chinese and now for us too it is also mandarins, candied dried fruit and lotus and melon seeds. Families gather and enjoy foods rich with symbolism and platters piled with tradition. This is something that just comes naturally.
