Friday, December 21, 2012

Dōngzhì Festival or Winter Solstice Festival (冬至)

The Dōngzhì Festival or Winter Solstice Festival (Chinese: 冬至; pinyin: Dōngzhì; literally "the Extreme of Winter") is one of the most important festivals celebrated by the Chinese and other East Asians during the Dongzhi solar term (winter solstice) on or around December 22 when sunshine is weakest and daylight shortest. It occurs on Friday, December 21, 2012, ie, today!
Traditionally, the Dongzhi Festival is also a time for the family to get together. One activity that occurs during these get togethers (especially in the southern parts of China and in Chinese communities overseas) is the making and eating of tangyuan (湯圓) or balls of glutinuous rice, which symbolize reunion. Tangyuan are made of glutinuous rice flour and sometimes brightly coloured. Each family member receives at least one large tangyuan in addition to several small ones. The flour balls may be plain or stuffed. They are cooked in a sweet soup or savoury broth with both the ball and the soup/broth served in one bowl. It is also often served with a mildly alcoholic unfiltered rice wine containing whole grains of glutinous rice (and often also Sweet Osmanthus flowers), called jiuniang.

Have you eaten your tangyuan today?
We were served with this tangyuan the other day at the Chinese Association Merit Award dinner.

Traditionally, we have been eating this tangyuan with roasted peanut/soy bean powder added with sugar. I will see whether I have the energy to go out and buy some later.

For more reading about this festival, click here.

4 comments:

matthew said...

Brother,please email to me these as I didnt have the time to taste it this year.I and my loved one are at different places .

William said...

Haha... you just click on the images and you will get a bigger copy. Right click and do a "Save as". And you can email the pic to your loved ones.Happy 冬至 to you.

Sha said...

HI bro,

loved your blog, especially pictures that you took. Although there may be more in your facebook, i prefer to read your blog......so keep posting those stories and keep up loading all the pictures that you took.

Take more Miri pictures, that everyday kind of thing....u never know...someday...in the future...people will refer to your blog to get some history of some kind..

Keep posting bro...........

William said...

Hi Sha,

Over the last few days, a few people told me that I must update more often. I wanted but I have been too busy during the last few months. Ok, I will try my best. I may be a little more free from Feb onward.

Thanks for your encouragement.

p/s I actually have a lot of photos taken but just couldn't manage to blog them.