Today, the Chinese celebrate Dong Zhi or the Winter Solstice Festival, marking "The Arrival of Winter".
One of the must-haves for the festival is the marble-shaped tang yuan, or glutinous rice ball. The name of the traditional dessert carries much meaning for the Chinese as it sounds like tuan yuan (reunion).
Yuan, which means "round" or "circle", is also an auspicious word that suggests yuan man (perfection). 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.
Since this is such a meaningful day, I manage to make the tang yuan to my family. My 5 years old son really love to eat it and the word that come out from his mouth every time put in the tang yuan is "emmm ... yummy ...". Can't show you how happy I'm to see his face although he didn't really know what is that supposed to meant for him when he eat it.
Yes ... in the Chinese calendar, the festival falls six weeks before Chinese New Year. A popular expression among the older Chinese refer to the end of a year and the coming of the next one is : "Chi tang yuan, da yi nian".. which mean eat tang yuan and grow older by a year.
With that also mean that .. I'm getting older 1 year again today ...
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