Raise Your Chopsticks to the Chinese New Year - by Susan Poizner
Healthy Eating Magazine

London's China Town will come to life on the 15th of February and you can bet the Chinese Lion Dancers will be there to help create a festive atmosphere. The 15th, of course, is the first day of the Chinese new year. The muscular lion dancers, many of whom are experts in Kung Fu, will be prancing around to the beat of a drum, hidden in huge, colourful and beastly costumes.

According to the Chinese lunar calendar, the new year they'll be celebrating is the Year of the Dragon. It's a lucky one, and people born in the coming months are said to be blessed with of energy, courage, sensitivity, and health. The New Year is a time of renewal in Chinese culture, when people repay their debts and clean their houses thoroughly, decorating them on New Year's Eve with peach blossoms, a symbol of good luck.

While the British tradition is to celebrate December 31st with a glass - or possibly even a bottle - of champagne in hand, the Chinese have a healthier approach. They plunge into the New Year with their chopsticks poised and ready for action. Consuming large amounts of delicious and symbolically appropriate food is, according to their tradition, a great way to guarantee an auspicious New Year.

But first you have to get the outfit right. "You wear red and orange, and everything has to be clean and new," says celebrity cook, Nancy Lam. "Even the poorest people in China will buy the cheapest material and make it into a new dress to wear for the new year." Red is a lucky colour in China, and in New Year feasts it will re-appear in various dishes in the form of added tomatoes and carrots.

But the addition of generous portions of meat on the menu is what makes this festival special for many Chinese. "For most of the year, a peasant in China will eat boiled vegetables and maybe they will put some meat in the broth," Nancy explains "They might eat a bit of the meat, dipping it in soya sauce, or use the water as a soup or to make their rice or noodles. One small chicken can last a family up to six days."

Not so on New Year, when, in some parts of the country, it's traditional to serve and eat a whole chicken - head, tail and feet included - as a way to bring prosperity. If it's togetherness she's looking for, a hostess will serve up a whole fish.

For queasy westerners like myself who wouldn't want to look a cooked chicken in the face, there are other options. "Eat a lot of Oyster," says Wing Yip, owner of a chain of British Chinese food superstores who has recently launched his own line of bottled sauces. "In Chinese Oyster means 'good business'". Well, it seems to have worked for him...

Vegetarians can welcome the new year in with some sort of noodle dish. There are so many kinds available now in the supermarkets including rice noodles, egg noodles, and buckwheat noodles. If you can get your hands on long, thin "swung noodles" tossed in the air by a Chinese chef to form the strands, all the better. This kind of noodle, Nancy Lam explains, should "go through your lips like silk". Whatever you do, make sure those noodles are long...and they'll help to bless you with a nice long life.

What about New Year nibbles? I went to Wing Yip's Cricklewood superstore in London to pick out a few lucky snacks. Ying Wong, the assistant manager, ushered me straight over to the nut section. "We call these happy nuts," she said, pointing out the pistachios. Further on, she tossed a bag of melt-in-your mouth, crystallized water-chestnuts into my trolley (symbolic meaning unknown, but delicious anyway) and then she led me to the clementines. "They symbolize long life," she said. I guess you eat those if you've lost your noodles.

As the holiday of holidays, sweets are essential during the Chinese New Year even for those Chinese who hardly use sugar in their cooking year round. Ying plucked a box of cookies off the pastry shelf. "You must have these Deep Fried Pies on the New Year" she told me. I guess New Year isn't a time to worry about the waistline. The deep fried pies were delicious, like crispy, oily fortune cookies with a sesame seed filling. "We like sweet snacks," Ying said.

To help counterbalance the richness of these festive foods, the Chinese drink copious amounts of tea. In China there are hundreds of different types and the best ones they keep for themselves. They do, however, export a small variety but there are rules as to which teas go with various types of meals.

Green tea, for instance, goes well with smaller snacks or "nibbles", eaten throughout the day. It's a perfect accompaniment for dried or crystallized fruit, Chinese cookies or lotus and red, white or black melon seeds. Green tea tastes light and astringent because it's unfermented. When harvested, the leaves are lightly rolled and immediately steamed then baked dry.

Black tea, is appropriate with main dishes and "dimsum" or fun meals. A dimsum meal will include small food parcels containing meat, fish or vegetables. They're a fiddle to make at home but can be bought frozen for home steaming or deep frying. Black tea is fully fermented so it has a stronger flavour that goes well with larger meals.

Oolong or Gunpower tea is somewhere in between the two. Partially fermented and sometimes mixed with flower petals such as lotus flowers, jasmine, roses or plum blossom, they are served the end of a meal - a healthier type of digestif.

The Chinese New Year is important enough to draw the gregarious Nancy Lam out of the spotlight and into her own home. "I have three kids," she says. "I celebrate my Chinese New Year very secretly with my children. I may swear and joke a lot, but seriously, I always have to thank God every day that I have my kids and I have made it through another year, the good times and the bad."

And the rest of us? Well, even if we aren't Chinese, many of us have been touched by Chinese medicine, Confucius' wisdom ("Silence is the true friend that never betrays") or at least by the now highly trendy Feng Shui, the ancient art of Chinese furniture arranging. So why not try celebrating the Chinese New Year? After all, eating your way to a long, healthy, happy and wealthy life sounds fun. And with that good luck and prosperity in the air, you might as well get cooking and claim your fair share.