Thursday December 22, 2005
‘Tang yuan’ to welcome winter
BY ONG YEE TING
PENANG: Today, the Chinese celebrate Dong Zhi or the Winter Solstice Festival, marking “the arrival of winter”.
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FAMILY EFFORT: Ong B Chen (left) and her sister B Bee making the ‘tang yuan’ in Georgetown Wednesday. |
The name of the traditional dessert carries much meaning for the Chinese as it sounds like tuan yuan (reunion).
Yuan, which means “round” or “a circle”, is also an auspicious word that suggests yuan man (perfection).
As such, said tang yuan-seller Ng Suan Kooi, families would gather together on Dong Zhi in the old days and make the glutinous rice balls to remind themselves that they were a family unit.
“But now modern families are too busy to make the effort to prepare the dough, cook the syrup and make the tang yuan themselves. This is where we come in to do the job for them,” she said.
Ng, 50, who has been selling tang yuan for 12 years at Pulau Tikus here, said the sweet dessert was especially popular during the festival.
“It’s more convenient for people to buy ready-to-eat ones instead of going through the hassle of making them.
“During the festival itself, I have to use 60kg to 70kg of dough to cater to the huge demand compared with 1kg on a normal day,” she added.
She said the dessert had grown even more popular these days.
“Instead of eating it once a year, you can now get tang yuan any time,” she added.
In the Chinese calendar, the festival 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).”
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