Winter Solstice Festival : Miri 2021

When we were young staying with Ngie Mah, we had one great competition : how many dumplings

can you SATAY together in one chopstick? Then we would have a race from end of the living room to the other (ruai). When we came back we could eat what ever still left on the chopstick. Many careless ones would drop some during the race. Record was 15...tightly squeezed together of course... My Ngie Mah made very good xi yang, with soy bean and peanut powder ground by the stone grinder. Even the glutinous flour was ground early in the morning. 

We usually get up very early in the morning to prepare the dumplings called in Foochow, Si Yang or tang yuen in Mandarin.

And it would be time for my Ngie Mah (maternal grandmother) to re tell her favourite story of how the Monkey Man came home to be reunited with his human family.

A long time ago in Fujian, a scholar went to Beijing to sit for his Imperial Exam but he failed and sadly returned home. On his way home because he was travelling alone on foot, being poor, he did not a have book boy (his errand boy) to accompany him, he was lost in the high mountains. He ran out of food and he fell into a ravine.

But luckily he was rescued by a group of half men half monkeys. He stayed with them many years as he had to recover from his injuries. He however had lost his sense of direction.

However soon the stories of a man who was seen with these half men half monkeys reached his wife's ears. She planned on how to bring back her husband as she was sure it was her husband if he could eat what she made.

She made dumplings coated with soy bean and peanut powder and they were so fragrant that the villagers admired her culinary skills.

She went to the mountains one late autumn day and stuck dumplings on every tree to make a trail to the village.

Upon her return she asked her fellow villagers to prepare a big net to capture a man.

And indeed, her husband ate the dumplings stuck on the trees and soon came back to their village.

The villagers threw the net over him and he suddenly regained his memory.

That was the first Winter Solstice Reunion in the history of China. From that time onwards, every Chinese would make sweet dumplings coated with soy bean and peanut powder for family reunion.

Happy Winter Solstice 2021.  December 21st.