Skip to main content

The Yin and Yang of Winter Solstice

Winter solstice to most of us means making and eating 'tong yuen' or also known as Dongzhi Festival, the traditional Chinese way of marking the shortest day albeit the longest night of the year. There are a lot of scientific and meteorological explanations for this and you can refer to Wikipedia for the world's interpretations for this. It ranges from time for some animal species to mate to major astronomical events.

But to the kids, it means rolling those colorful dough balls and eating them with a ginger, pandan, sugary concoction.
Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied across cultures, but many have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time - Wikipedia
The Winter Solstice Sky on my side of the world, Malaysia
The origins of this festival can be traced back to the yin and yang philosophy of balance and harmony in the cosmos
The kids are no longer little...they're nearing adult age, with some stretching their wings across in another region, which serves as a constant reminder that there's really no time like the present.

Kids gather to make colorful tong yuens
Any time they get to come together is precious not only for them but for us parents too. We've watched them grow up together since the time they were born. They've fought, cried about, bit each other, made jokes and ganged up on one another the way cousins and siblings would.

I suspect the tong yuen days for these kids will become rarer and rarer.

Making naturally-colored tong yuens
Call me sentimental or whatever but I truly appreciate the fact that they still get the chance to have these small little gatherings, no matter how rare. One day, when we're all old and rickety, we will remember these numbered days of coming together under one roof and making these.
The festive food is also a reminder that celebrators are now a year older and should behave better in the coming year
Some less traditional families don't always celebrate the festival and honestly, most old folks do it for the sake of the young ones. So, don't feel bad if you don't celebrate it. You can always try to make your own with this tang yuen recipe (AllRecipes) and invite your friends or colleagues over for some drinks!

If you don't like the unnatural food coloring, you can make the green with pandan, blue with clitoria ternatea (butterfly pea flowers), red/pink with mashed up dragon fruit, and yellow/orange with mushed pumpkin. At least, that's what I saw being made here. You can share your own recipe if you have another way to making the colors naturally.

As you can see below, everyone or every family is a little different. You do you.

Muaks and Love,
Marsha

Merry Christmas to everyone who is celebrating and Happy Holidays to those who are just enjoying the days off!


A post shared by Marsha Maung (@marshamaung) on


A post shared by Rebecca Wu (@rebecca2la) on

p.p.s. If you find some pictures or words offensive, would like your pictures removed or find grammatical errors, please forgive me. Me human. Please feel free to let me know and I will remove or edit said offensive stuff as immediately as I can get my ass to my computer or, if possible, on my phone. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Liberating Activity - Guess What Mine Is....

When asked what’s my one single favorite thing to do in the world, I would usually name a whole list of things that I love to do when my work is not screaming at me. Something that takes my mind COMPLETELY off of everyday tasks and relaxes me. Take a guess what it is…. If you say ‘ reading ’, yes, I love reading (especially soppy love stories with lots of sex scenes, please. Hee hee hee ….) and I also love mystery novels but it’s not the first on the list. If you say ‘ playing the piano ’; yes, I love playing the piano. Creating forms a huge part of my life and whenever I play the piano (as inept at it as I am), there’s this tiny little girl inside of me jumping up and down with glee, clapping her hands. It’s my childhood dream to be able to play the piano! And thumping on the keys gives me a sense of satisfaction when I hear the music. If you say ‘ writing ’; You’ve got to be kidding me! You mean I don’t write enough as it is? Case closed. If you say ‘ playing with my kids ’; Yea...

Maid Side-Kick

I was kind of a little sad when I read the news about this - there will be no live-in Indonesian maids in Malaysia anymore . There are pros and cons to having a live-in maid, as with everything else, but for us, we enjoyed more pros than cons. Back then, when my kids were little, we brought in a family of maids to help with...well, just about everything, and we were like two families merged into one. They ate what we ate, we sleep, they sleep, we shop, they shop, they joke, we laugh, we joke, they laugh...for me, the maid I hired was more like a sister and side-kick to me. For that few years, I was dependent on her to mind-read my schedule and when I need or don't need help. She picked things up quickly and we ended up having lots of moments whereby we were in sync. Today, two of them are on my Facebook and we were gleefully chatting over Facebook Messenger since they've just discovered the wonders of the Internet and Social Media. Since we were more like partners in crim...

Demanding a Balanced Lifestyle

We live in a world choked with demands….demand for more money, better lifestyle, more holidays, smarter kids, bigger house, posher cars….etc. People walk around with spiritually unimportant goals in their minds driven by the need to succeed and be better than others around them. Hong Kong. South Korea. Japan. Most Asian countries suffer from this ill-fate which have caused a horrific rise in the number of suicide rates in the said countries. Malaysia is no exception as well although we’re very slowly gaining ground on our neighbors. Just picking up my son from school can become a stressful affair. I’ve mentioned this to a few friends of mine over the phone and all of them cluck their tongue shake their head. It’s end of the year and the kids are getting their test results back by now. I overheard a couple of tai-tais (housewives) gripe about their kids’ results. Mom: I don’t know-lah. My kid did not do very well this term. The best also got 95 only. (NINETY FIVE ONLY???) ...