Sunday, February 1, 2009

Happy 牛 Year & Happy 人日


GONG XI FA CAI & HAPPY 牛 YEAR 2009 to all ...

Year 2009 is a Chinese Brown Earth (Soil) Cow Year. It will begin on 26th January 2009 and end on 13th February 2010.

The basic foundation of Chinese horoscope is Yin Yang. Yin is female. Yang is male. Twelve animals are divided into Yin and Yang groups. The odd ordering animals, Rat, Tiger, Dragon, Horse, Monkey and Dog are male in Yang group. The even ordering animals, Cow, Rabbit, Snake, Sheep, Chicken and Pig, are female in Yin group. That is why we use Cow instead of Ox and Chicken instead of Rooster.

Chinese New Year or nóng lì xin nián (农历新年) is also called Spring Festival. The term nóng lì xin nián literally means “New Year’s agricultural calendar” because it is celebrated according to the Chinese calendar which is both lunar and solar.


Today is the seventh day of Chinese New Year and was traditionally known as ren ri (人日). It was literally translated as the common man’s birthday, the day when everybody turns a year older. It was the day that we tossed raw fish salad or Yu sheng, a unique festive dish.

Yu sheng means raw fish, but it's pronounced the same as another word that means increasing abundance, which is why raw fish salad is eaten on Chinese New Year, when it is traditional to dine on foods whose names or shapes may augur good fortune in the year ahead.

Yu sheng, however, isn't an ancient Chinese tradition - it was invented in a Chinese restaurant in Singapore in 1964, and it isn't widely eaten in China proper, though its popularity has spread to Malaysia and Hong Kong.

If you order the dish, the ingredients are brought to your table on a platter, and the server does the final assembly and enthusiastically tossing it all together with chopsticks.

This year, we tossed Yu sheng at Kam Ling Seafood Restaurant, the most prominent seafood restaurant in Tawau. The Yu sheng taste very good, just nice. A big thumbs-up for Kam Ling Seafood Restaurant ~!


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