CNY in Singapore means a week filled with red and gold everything, lion dances and anything festive including these exciting snacks. While exchanging pineapple tarts, love letters and other festive food goodies during Chinese New year most people are probably aware that many of them have their little tale or legend to tell. Don’t miss the chance to come and visit the place where they started and learn the stories behind each of them – you might look at these sweets in a whole new way after that!
The connection to prosperity – Explaining the Simple ‘Humble Pineapple Tart’
Pineapple tart which is a buttery pineapple jam on a flaky pastry shells, where else are complete without it. Though it has become almost customary to have it during CNY celebration, the pineapple tarts are originally associated with the Peranakan family.
Pineapples are as were considered symbols of hospitality and prosperity in the olden SE Asia, the royal pineapple was embodied into Nonya homemade pastries served during parties. These round buttery pastries with the premium pineapple filling were celebrations signifying the hope for a greater new year’s harvest.
The Nonya pineapple tart has since developed from a dish unique only to the Peranakans to something that is freely available in numerous CNY snack shops. However, when you are relishing those pineapple tarts during CNY visiting or when having reunion dinner, think on how each little tart symbolised sweet dreams and cheer for prosperity in the approaching year.
The Message Contained in Love Letters is that People Who Love Each Other Remain Together Forever
The next CNY specialty is the conventional filigree of a love letter or kueh belanda. These are confectionery products made by a very thin eggy pancake and then rolled with cylindrical shape and then dusted with powdered or granulated sugar.
Historically, in the periods when the letter was one of the chief forms of communication between sweethearts or friends who were divided by space, the rounded shape and the fatigue of the love letters gave a name to this type of confectionery. Love letters represented affection and yearning as between two individuals who had no option but to part as do rolled up love notes.
However, in the present day celebration of the CNY, the famous ‘love letters’ symbolize the strong unbreakable relationships between friends, families and people in general. While you continue to have your taste of love letters this season, consider the relationships and good and sweet moments that keep you connected even with fluctuating life situations.
Or A Tradition of Kueh As Forms of Thank You
An equivalence of this is the kueh or the festive glutinous rice that has a rice skin wherein it contains sweet coconut fillings in its inside. Kuehs origins follow instead from the delicacies that were traditionally baked or steamed by generations of aunties and grandmothers in preparation for CNY.
Steam-boiling and hand-wrapping of each or kueh were time-consuming outcomes that signified genuinity, hospitable reception and gratitude to he visitors for taking their precious time to come and visit. Therefore, or kuehs were prepared in large quantities to express the appreciation of the return of relatives and friends during CNY.
Today every piece meticulously made or kueh commemorates the spirit of this season of togetherness and deferred celebration of relation ships.
The Symbolism of Yu Sheng For Abundance and Togetherness
What kind of lists of CNY goodies does not include yu sheng – the vibrant raw fish and vegetable preparation? The yu sheng preparation to be enjoyed together with porridge during Chinese New Year breakfast is a product of Cantonese diaspora in Singapore before the second world War.
The term yu sheng means raw fish, while each of those ingredients has some sort of good omen associated with it. For example, the raw fish is associated with otherness or copiousness, and the crackers, oils, and gold are considered other forms of otherness or wealth. Flinging the ingredients around and consuming said salad is also believed to guarantee one big money in the new year.
Besides luck, yu sheng has other social values today. Yu sheng is served between families or communities during events such as Graduations or Chinese New Year’s Eve. Lohei symbolizes blessings and reunion where in tossing the dish, literally the hopes and best wishes for the new year and prosperity including everyone coming back together again.
The Use Of Kueh Bangkit As The Chinese New Year Luck Products
While eating a kueh bangkit, a buttery cookie of a sort that you can crumble between your fingers during CNY carries a form of satisfaction. Wrapped up in the velvety flavor of a very traditional ice cream stereotype is a history worth knowing. These cookies came from the Baba Nyonya community where these were home made by the ladies during festive occasions.
The shape of the button like structure is cute which symbolises ju xin that is prosperity. However, when consumed with hands or grabbed by fingers, kueh bangkit is tender and this symbolizes the idea of acceptance where the misfortune attached to something can be just let go. So kueh bangkit represents hope of getting better things in life in the future!
In every kueh bangkit cookie, there is sweetness in anticipation and in setting out itself for a bright and lucky start on the new year. That could be why they are such great and considered holiday presents.
Dodol’s Link to Sweetening Relations
It is not unusual for countrypeople to take their loved ones some dodol sweet in a basket every time they visit them during CNY. Today, this exquisite coconut milk rice flour, and jaggery sweet looks like a simple CNY delicacy.
But in past generations however, dodol had more community importance. Used during celebratory occasions, dodol represented best wishes for the improvement of relationships between newlyweds or strangers at the community level. Therefore dodol was used as imparted gift, to sweeten the relationship between the giver and the receiver.
Today, dodol is used for its lucky meaning. With the dodol that you send, think of better aspirations for interaction with the new buddies and friends in order to get better sweet and close relations for the coming year.
Happiness, Health and Wealth: Bak Kwa’s Savoury Success Story
What is CNY without bak kwa? These thin sliced aromatic BBQ pork common nowadays during CNY has a very simple background. Original bak kwa can be dated back to post war Singapore’s Chinatown. Many of Chinese immigrants arrived in the Philippines with some money but no job and started barbecuing pork on the streets for live eligibility using such equipment as banana leaves for charcoaling.
Originally consumed by street hawker and peddler imagine, bak kwa has come a long way and has transcended the extent of being commercialized to become the symbolic and customary Chinese New Year snack of Lim Chee Guan, Fragrance and Bee Cheng Hiang and many others. However, what a sight and flavor there behind the sheen of the bak kwa shops, it is a generations of sweet successes that depicts their resilience and the spirit of the Chinese Singaporean on their back, fighting hard against all the odds.
Truly the smoky taste of bak kwa makes it the ideal CNY snack depicting prospects of desirable results for aggressive ventures in the following year.
Sweet Yum Yum! The Historiographic Wealth of CNY Sweets
He wonders where all the perennial favourites, from pineapple tarts and ‘love letters’ to fish-based yang Zhao, or ‘Yu Sheng’ feel so quintessentially Singaporean now. However, if one looks deeper beneath the great taste there are great tales – myths, dreams, some tough realities and untold stories from the past.
In the Peranakan houses to poor Chinese and Cantonese immigrants families, many of the CNY delicacies we now indulge in are products of significant and triumphant annals of Singapore Immigrant Survival Cuisine. Be it sweet with good wishes or sour with strife these edibles convey much of what is dear during this, the most sought after festive season of the year, be it general good fortune or love, hope or thanksgiving.
Therefore, the next time you buy CNY goodies and or received some from your loved ones in the next coming days, it is useful to reflect briefly over their rich history. There are so many things that we can learn from these food lovers starting with sweet, savoury and melt in the mouth textures. A treat is undoubtedly a bright story of its own – it is time to recall and remember how such as treat became iconic and yet so special during CNY in Singapore?