Yee Sang 鱼生

For the past few days, almost everyone in blogsphere is posting pictures of the food from their big feast on CNY. Sadly I have none. On the night Chinese New Year's eve, there was no reunion dinner and we had only two dishes (one meat dish and one vege dish) for dinner. Everyone eats little and too much food will only result in filling the rubbish bin. I also think that my health consciousness is rubbing off on my parents. We try not to overeat or gorge ourselves with too much unhealthy fatty fried stuff. Eat healthy and waste not we say!

Anyway, the half-Chinese side of me decided to have "yee sang" on the third day of CNY. When is the best time to eat the "yee sang" you may ask? I have no idea myself, although I remember it is prepared on certain days during CNY. ;p

"Yee sang" or "yu sheng" literally translates into raw fish but mine has no raw fish at all. It just consisted of shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments.

The ingredients

Yee sang before mixing

Secret ingredients

Yee sang after mixing all the ingredients

Yee sang after tossing

It is a custom for families and friends to gather around the table and, on cue, proceed to toss the shredded ingredients into the air with chopsticks while saying 吉祥话 (jí xiáng huà, auspicious wishes) out loud to mark the start of a prosperous new year. So we proceeded to do the same. Toss everything as high as possible. Sounds fun!

While tossing…
Little Dove: 人山人海 (ren shan ren hai)
Mother: huh?
Little Dove: 天长地久 (tian chang di jiu)
Father: what?
Little Dove: 白发魔女 (bai fa mo nu)
Brother-in-law: HA HA HA HA
Little Dove: 长生不老 (chang sheng bu lao)
Sister: I want I want
Little Dove: 快高长大 (kuai gao zhang da)
Everyone stares at me in disbelief
Little Dove: I am still growing ma….

Oh, my awfully sorry command of the Chinese language. I think I heard 步步高升 (bu bu gao sheng) somewhere between the tossing. Maybe I will use that next year. ;p

Happy Chinese New Year
Little Dove