Happy Lantern Festival! 元宵节快乐!

Today is the last day of the Lunar New Year celebrations, and it is also known as 元宵节 (Yuan Xiao Jie). It is also the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, which marks the first full moon of the lunisolar year. On this day, we celebrate by eating a traditional dessert called 汤圆(Tang Yuan). 圆yuan = round, and 汤tang = soup. So Tang Yuan basically refers to a dessert made of  round rice balls cooked in sugary soup. It is believed that the round shape of the balls as well as the bowls they are served in, symbolize family togetherness. Eating these rice balls are also supposed to bring the family happiness and good luck in the new year.

C and I thought it will be a wonderful occasion to get together as a family and make the dessert with each other. We headed over to my Mum's with the ingredients and started preparing the dish after lunch. It's really simple to make, and the main ingredients for the rice balls are glutinous rice flour and water. As for the soup, we used brown sugar, pandan leaves and a small knob of ginger. You can also add food colouring to the dough to make the rice balls more colourful. C and her cousins used red, green and blue.

Green dough by J.

Pink dough by C.

After rolling the dough into tiny balls, the girls decided to add their own touches to the dish. They thought adding faces would be cute! Haha.

The girls made faces for the rice dumplings!

Kids can really be creative, and they are pretty good at coming up with their own creations! My sister-in-law and I were glad to go with the flow.

Do you spot some animals in there?

Girls having fun making Tang Yuan!

The rice balls are boiled and then added into the
sugar syrup.

Ta-da! A bowl of  汤圆 made by the girls!

Besides eating Tang Yuan, Lantern Festival traditionally is also a time for children to head out at night with various shapes of lanterns and solving riddles on lanterns (猜灯谜).

Overall, I think it is important that our children learn and experience the various traditions in our Chinese culture, and  元宵节 (Yuan Xiao Jie) definitely is a wonderful occasion to get together with family!