Chinese all over the world celebrated the Winter Solstice Festival on Dec 22, 2018. One of the traditional Chinese festivals, it is marked by the making and eating of tangyuan or balls of glutinous rice, which symbolise reunion.
Made of glutinous rice flour and sometimes brightly coloured, the dumplings are cooked in a sweet soup or savoury broth with both the balls and the soup/broth served in bowls. Celebrated since the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), the festival is also a time for family reunions.
Besides the tangyuan, families enjoy their favourite dishes as they gather together for the Winter Solstice dinner. Some Chinese also gather at their ancestral temples to worship on this day.
There is a traditional belief among the Chinese that if you eat the tangyuan during the Winter Solstice Festival, you are automatically a year older. Alternative names for the festival are the Winter Festival or Dongzhi Festival.
China has determined the point of Winter Solstice since the spring and autumn of 770-476 BC by observing the movements of the sun with a sundial. On that day, the Northern hemisphere will have the shortest daytime and the longest nightime.
After the day, the daytime will become longer and longer.
When I was younger, my father, who was born and bred on Hainan Island, China, told me that the Winter Solstice Festival was the last traditional Chinese festival for the year and one month from the festival, we would be welcoming the Chinese New Year.
After I grew up and moved to work in Kuching, there were years when I forgot about the festival. That was in the days before the arrival of the internet and the handphones. That was when no one reminded me about the important traditional festival.
This year, a few days before the Winter Solstice Festival, friends were already busy sending videos of people making tangyuan. On the day itself, I received many Winter Solstice Festival greetings from my various WhatsApp chat groups. Thank God for the inventions of the internet and handphones! They are really a great help to forgetful and absentminded people like me.
When I was growing up, I usually enjoyed tangyuan once a year, that is, during the Winter Solstice Festival.My mother would buy a small packet of glutinous flour which had been properly mixed with water from the local wet market on that day and just roll the flour into balls at home. These were plain dumplings with no fillings.
My siblings and I knew of one stall near the Sibu Wet Market which sold tangyuan with ground peanut fillings. It was 20 cents then for five small balls of glutinous rice flour. In those days, when five Malaysian dollars could buy you a basketful of food, 20 cents was a lot of money. I recalled visiting the stalls only twice in my childhood.
Nowadays, you can easily buy packets of glutinous rice flour and make tangyuan anytime you want to. I don’t know why my mother did not buy glutinous rice flour and make the dumplings herself. Now, she is too old to tell me why.
Like many things in the world, the art of making tangyuan has evolved with the passage of time. I used to eat only plain balls of glutinous rice flour served in a sweet soup. I make the sweet soup by boiling pandanus leaves in a pot of water and adding sugar to the water. Now, the balls of glutinous flour come in many colours – red, green, yellow, blue, etc.
I will always remember this year’s Winter Solstice Festival. It was the first time that I ate so many dumplings. My daughter-in-law made the dumplings for me twice – once on the eve of the festival and once on the day itself.
On the eve of the festival, I had dinner at a food court with my son, daughter-in-law and mother. My daughter-in-law passed me a container of tangyuan she had just cooked. Her version of the traditional food reminded me of the “bubur cha cha” (a sweet coconut milk soup which commonly contains sweet potatoes and taro). The tangyuan contained sweet coconut milk, fresh milk, sugar, sago pearls, Japanese beancurds and, of course, balls of glutinous rice flour.
“I know you are busy and will not have time to make your own tangyuan,” my daughter-in-law said to me as she passed me the container.
The food looked so good that at first, I thought she had bought it. A few minutes later , I was pleased to discover that the tangyuan tasted as good as they looked.
The next day, my daughter-in-law passed me another version of the tangyuan she made and shared with her parents during the Winter Solstice Festival. That was the first time in my life I tasted sweet ginger tea dumplings! I found the tangyuan interesting and innovative.
Nevertheless, despite the lovely gifts of tangyuan from my daughter-in-law, I did not forget to make my own plain, white tangyuan at home. When I shared a picture of my tangyuan with my best friend, the wise lady replied: “”No matter how simple it is, the symbolic meaning is there.”
I am sentimental about the Winter Solstice Festival because it reminds me of my late father, a Chinese immigrant from Hainan Island, China, and my Chinese heritage. It reminds me that although I am now a Sarawakian and a Malaysian, my ancestors from my father’s side came from China.
After the Winter Solstice Festival, many of us who are Christians are looking forward to welcoming Christmas Day. Since today is the eve of Christmas, I wish all Christians a happy and merry Christmas.
