Man's Day

Just dropping by to greet you all ...

[b]HAPPY BIRTHDAY![/b]

It's the 7th day of the First Chinese Lunar Month of the Year of the Dog! Basically the Chinese has been counting the years since the mythical Shang Dynasty so this year it has to be some thing of 4000-ish. I'm not sure. The Gregorian Calendar seems to play a more important role in our daily lives. We leave the 'lunacy' to astrologers. And this doesn't seem to give you an answer to why I'm greeting you all this!

It's the day when Nu Wa made mankind out of clay. :) Also called Yan Yat, Man's Day. We don't have cakes in Old China, and what seems to be the custom is that we loh yee sang. :D Yee sang is a huge plate of salad. The ingredients are fried biscuits, sliced pickles, sesame seeds, crushed peanuts, pieces of jellyfish, colored things (I'm not sure what are those things but they are usually red and green and comes in cut strands). Each ingredient is arranged to its kind. The family and friends would sit around, and the father would pour in the sesame oil, vinegar, malt syrup and the crushed sesame seeds. And the most important ingredient of all! The raw fish pieces! Usually it's a grouper. Today its the expensive choice is salmon. And the entire family and guests stands up with their chopsticks ready, and we go mixing the yee sang together! We pull the ingredients far from the plate, the higher the better as the custom goes. The mess is only necessary. It's not meant to be filling. It's symbolic and it's fun. :D So the more chopsticks the merrier and the huger the plate is!

The Chinese New Year celebration lasts for 15 days. It's sometimes call the Spring Festival. The first reunion dinner is on New Year's Eve. The second reunion dinner is on the 7th day. The third reunion dinner is on the 15th. We usually skip the 15th in Malaysia. Not sure about the Chinese in China. I'm Malaysian Chinese. I'm only speaking on behalf of all Malaysian Chinese. :) The Chinese is 30% of the Malaysian population. So the entire country goes on holidays for the first two to three days of the celebration.

The 15th day is also known as the Yuan Xiao Festival. It is named after a palace servant girl. The story shall be told in length on the 15th. :D