Thursday, December 22, 2005
12/22/2005 11:46:00 AM

'Tung Chieh' Festival

posted by FH2o

According to Chinese Calendar, today is “Tung Chieh” or the Winter Solstice, marking “the arrival of winter” and is celebrated as a festival which falls six weeks before Chinese New Year. A popular expression among the older Chinese to refer to the end of a year and the coming of the next one is: "Chi tang yuan, da yi nian (Eat tang yuan and grow older by a year)."

A must-haves is the marble-shaped ‘tang yuan’ or glutinous rice ball – a traditional dessert. In keeping with this tradition, we gather our kids around to help make the glutinous rice balls last night. Being imaginative, creative and mischievous; instead of the traditional white and pink colour, whilst we were not looking - they mixed up the colours to create multi-colours balls instead! We will not tamper with the cooking of the syrup though - certain aspects of tradition should well be left enough alone!

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  At Thursday, 22 December, 2005 Blogger Chen said:

very colourful tang yuan..
looks like guli :)

Happy Guo Tong

  At Thursday, 22 December, 2005 Blogger Happysurfer said:

Happy guo tong. Nice balls.

  At Thursday, 22 December, 2005 Blogger Jellyfish said:

yalor...
so colorful bulats

hehehe....

  At Thursday, 22 December, 2005 Blogger Jeremy C said:

nice tang yuen! happy tung chieh to you :)

  At Thursday, 22 December, 2005 Blogger @ロウ 。LOW@ said:

Nice balls??? :p

Anyway, Happy Tung Chieh everyone!

  At Friday, 23 December, 2005 Blogger Robin said:

Aiyo, so this is the multi-coloured ball you were talking abt.

haha.. but artificial colour leh...

Got flavour or not, pink for strawberry, purple for grapes, yellow for lemon.

See you tonite,,

Merry Christmas to Everyone!!!

  At Friday, 23 December, 2005 Blogger FH2O said:

'BIN - once again your imagination is ahead of you!

Trust that everyone else enjoyed their "Tang Yuan" yesterday!

  At Friday, 23 December, 2005 Blogger Pandabonium said:

Japan has a similar food for New Year's celebration - mochi rice balls, sometimes stuffed with sweet bean paste.

Winter arrived here with a vengance. The heaviest snow fall on record for the past 122 years. I'm happy to be on the leeward side of Japan and not subjected to snow (it's nice to visit and play in, but not to live with).

Happy Tung Chieh.

  At Saturday, 24 December, 2005 Blogger bonnie said:

Oh, that's fun...

Mmmm. Mochi. I like mochi.

I'm thinking about making andagi (Okinawan doughnuts, used to love making those when I was a kid in Hawaii) for my friends who are coming over this weekend, instead of the more usual Christmas cookies. Would've been baking this week if I hadn't been walking!

  At Sunday, 25 December, 2005 Blogger Robin said:

Guess you are too busy entertaining me and going to party that you did not update your "block" yet.

hehe...

(ps I finally have internet access in the land of the croco)

  At Thursday, 29 December, 2005 Blogger day-dreamer said:

Heh. To think that I was the only one who is mental enough to roll balls from doughs of various colours. Heh. Looks like I'm not so abnormal after all. Ha ha!


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