I'm quite sure that most Chinese celebrate the day. It's Dong Zhi in Mandarin and Dong Zhit or (maybe more people will know this term better) Guo Dong in Cantonese or Winter Solstice Festival in English =)). But honestly I only knew it's called Dong Zhi/Dong Zhit tonight when my bro wished me ahehe. I've used the term Guo Dong all this while =/
Actually, I'm still unclear about this festival. I know it means to celebrate the arrival of winter because Guo Dong is directly translated as "through winter" (my vocabulary is bad sorry!). Wait a sec, winter in Malaysia??! Obviously NO. It's just a tradition has been practiced by our ancestors teehee.
And say what, I simply love Guo Dong. Food, food and food!~ LOL. It's almost like the reunion dinner on CNY Eve, but less dishes hehe. If I celebrate at my grandparents' h0use, my grandmother will cook "Nine Big Ghosts" (it has some real good meaning in Cantonese xD), from spring rolls to steamed fish to big prawns. YUM. But this year my parents and I had dinner at my aunt's house. Even though there were less dishes, there was a big, fat whole chicken. So juicy. It was just slaughtered this morning in the market *smirks*. I mean, of course the freshest food tastes best, right? (*^-^*;;)
However, that wasn't the best part on Dongzhi yet. Because the main thing is to eat the dessert. The glutinous rice balls with cane sugar or gula Melaka, black sesame paste, chopped peanuts and other ingredients as the filling. Some times people do eat these plain without any filling. It is also known as tang yuan (in Mandarin), tong yuen (in Cantonese), and kueh ee (in Hokkien). The traditional colours of tong yuen are pink and white. But nowadays it has all sorts of flavours and colours. For instance, in the TVB drama Life Made Simple, Ah Wong created the Lou Po Tong Yuen which is yellow in colour and its filling is mango. So.....creative lol.
VERY VERY UNFORTUNATELY I did not have the chance to eat it this year (my mum and I did not make it nor did my aunties *sob*). Sigh, even my bro and his coursemates made the dessert at Sabah. Oh well. Nothing much to lose ><.
Sigh, even though I did not eat it this year, at least I can stare at these photos...
The ready-to-be-cooked tong yuens..
A pretty bowl of tong yuen in syrup (the syrup consists water, sugar, ginger and pandan leaves)
Just to remind everyone not to make super big tong yuen because it's kinda chewy and to prevent from choking. It might also upset your stomach if you eat too much.
Happy Dong Zhi, everyone~!
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