Happy Chinese New Year!

Making Dumplings - Celebrating the Year of the Ox

The first day of the first lunar month is the New Year in the Chinese lunar calendar. Among the traditional Chinese festivals, this is the most important and the most bustling festival. 

New Year's Eve is the time for a happy reunion of all family members, when they sit around the table to have a sumptuous New Year's Eve dinner, talking and laughing, until daybreak, which is called "staying up to see the year out". When the bell tolls midnight on New Year's Eve, people eat dumplings. In ancient times, midnight was called zi shi (a period of the day from 11pm to 1am). Dumplings (jiao zi) are eaten because it sounds the same as "change of the year and the day" in Chinese.

Chinese New Year was celebrated this year on Friday 12th February. Our students from Year 9 to 12 Chinese Language classes made dumplings to celebrate the Year of the Ox! 

Thanks to the following students who shared the dumpling recipe and their reviews:

Layla APARICI, Sara KARUPOVIC, Nicholas CUNANAN, Jacqueline NGUYEN, Eh Ro SAW, Lisa NGUYEN, Sophie LY, Shukurani ZUBERI and Victoria TALIAOA.

Special thanks to Mr Ding who travelled between both campuses and cooked delicious dumplings for our teachers! We wish everyone xin nian kuai le (Happy New Year)!

DUMPLING RECIPE

Ingredients

One Chinese cabbage

Chicken/Pork mince in a bowl (optional)

An egg, some soy sauce, salt and cooking wine

Two bags of round dumpling pastry

Steps:

1. Wash the Chinese cabbage under cold water. Split them into leaves. Finely dice the cabbage into very small pieces.
2. Combine diced cabbage, an egg, some soy sauce, salt and cooking wine with meat of your choice.
3. Take a circular portion of dumpling pastry and place a spoonful of the filling in the centre – leave a gap around the edges.
4. Use a dab of water to wet the edges of the dough, then fold the pastry in half or toward the centre and fold it closed.
5. Place dumplings in boiling water and leave to cook. Take the dumplings out when they are ready.
6. Enjoy the dumplings!

Here are some of our student reviews:

In today’s Chinese lesson we learnt how to make dumplings in celebration of Chinese New Year! This year is the year of the ox. Today was my first time making and trying dumplings. It was definitely an experience! From preparing the cabbage to forming the dumplings it was all so much fun! As it was my first time trying them, they were delicious! Dumplings still aren’t my favourite but they were really good! The reason as to why is because mine was a veggie one. After making the dumplings, Miss Wang was so generous that she gave us red pockets with chocolate inside!

It was my first time ever trying dumplings. The filling looked weird at first, but it tasted really good! The flavour was salty and savoury, definitely would have them again!     

The dumplings tasted yummy as appeared. Although it’s squishy and salty, but it’s appealing to the tongue and mouth.

I cut cabbages very nicely. When I made the dumplings I didn’t do it as good as others. Overall it was a fun experience. I like to do it again!   

Today I was able to achieve making decent dumplings. The process of the dumplings was interesting, since you have to dice everything and mix them together. The three steps we had were, dice, mix and fold, the folding part is where you pinch the skin of the dumpling together, and can create different designs. In the end we had the dumplings and we received a red pocket and decent review from both Mr Ding and Miss Wang.