How To Create A Chinese New Year Plate With A Dog Face

Photo from Facebook.

Problem
How do I create a Chinese New Year lo hei ('prosperity') goodwill wish, without spending a fortune, and in the shape of a dog, as lunar year 2018-9 is the year of the dog.

Answer
If you live in Singapore as a Resident, or expat, or are visiting, you can attend a New Year dinner at a restaurant or town or country club, or Toastmasters Club or hotel. If you suggest making a shape of a dog, they will probably be very interested and want to help you.

Why is it make at the last minute? Because the ingredients are shredded vegetables and raw or smoked fish or shredded chicken which will go off quickly in Singapore heat, or any time anywhere. If you buy the packet from a supermarket, it comes in lots of small packets of vegetables so it's quicker if everybody helps and its more fun and makes for more teamwork and gets everybody involved.

Many Chinese New year lo hei meals are created on the table in front of you. Therefore you need some advance practice in making the dog face.

The idea behind the meal is to have lots of colours of food.

For example, shredded carrot, mandarin orange slices in small semicircles upright to create a border around the edge of the plate.

Photo from Facebook.

You could draw the outline of the dog's face on edible rice paper with food colouring pencils or icing squeezed out of a tube. Then build up the face with the different colours.

If you think it might not look right, or the underlying picture will disappear, have another picture propped up vertically behind the plate against the wall.

You will also need to provide:

Paper plates
Wooden Chopsticks
Paper napkins
Paper cups and tap water

Useful Websites
visit singapore
http://www.visitsingapore.com/en/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

CHINESE NEW YEAR, Friday 16 Feb 2018, and Yu Sheng Dinners in Singapore

Chinese New Year Dinner with red packets and food in assorted colours.

Problem
I'm already getting invitations to Chinese New Year events. When it is?

Answer
It moves around unlike the general New year fixed for the eve of January 1st. Chinese New Year is also called Lunar New Year and celebrated all over the Far East, China, Singapore. It starts Friday 16 2018. Just time for you to sort out a few cards of emails for friends, clubs and businesses in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Chinatowns all over the world.

This year in the Chinese zodiac is called the year of the dog.

What to expect?

In Singapore it's a wonderful time of year with orange lanterns everywhere and many people giving you two oranges. People buy them in bulk and they don't even have to be bright oranges. You just keep passing oranges on to other people and quite ropey oranges will do.

Orange lanterns will signal Chinese restaurants, hotels, businesses.


Lion Dances
You hear drumming all over the city as lion dance performers are carried from place to place in the back os trucks with banners.

I'm not to keen on the lion dance noise but I do like the spectacle. Sometimes they throw chocolates. They did that in the Tanglin Club in Singapore last year.

By the way, it's called CNY for short.

Red Packets
The unmarried youngsters are given red packets contained note money. Banks and businesses given out empty packets to customers adversiting the business name on the back. In Singapore I received a red packet from McDonalds with a coupon for money off a meal.

Useful Websites
www.singaporeair.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
For more about Yu Sheng dinners see the next post.