chinese new year is probably the only time where we eat rice for breakfast for a few days in a row. our tongues are far more used to bread or cereal at that time of the day, if we eat anything at all, stuff that my grandmother would insist that was 'unfilling'. it seems that no matter how far you wonder from the motherland, you will only derive your strength from rice because you are from the southern regions of china.
because the sister and i are old aunties stuffed in the bodies of young girls, we always looked forward to the dishes that my grandmother cooked for the new year. there is something about old kitchens that make the food much heartier, the amount of oil that old hands put in also matter la huh, but i don't think most people's grandmothers still make their soups over a charcoal fire anymore. whether the difference is imaginary or real, my grandmother's soup has that 'body' that my mother's soup lack whereas the mother's soup tastes a little more delicate.
unfortunately, it's been several years since we last had a proper reunion dinner with soup, several dishes and our precious tong shui. the dinner is now a plain steamboat because 1) my grandmother can no longer cook those dishes as she has either forgotten the recipes or cooking is too tiring 2) a kitchen cannot accommodate more than one boss female as those who cook will know, so she won't want helpers aka sister and me.
although there are new additions to the family every year (my latest nephew/niece might arrive near my birthday), i think we get more surprised by just how much the people around us have aged and how certain traditions will go with them. i have no idea why my grandmother buys a pot of pussywillow during cny or how to greet quite a few of my relatives by their proper cantonese honorifics but i still want those to stick around a little longer. call me a sentimentalist but i think they provide a certain amount of solace to people who are too used to change, even if these traditions are artificial constructs (what isn't really).
there may be a general decline in the festive mood of cny in my family because the dishes aren't as sumptuous as they used to be but it was most heartening when a whole family of females dissed the cooking on a taiwanese cooking show simply because 'sweet and sour fish is not like that!'. in cantonese too :)
our day will come.
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