Chinese New Year - Mandarin Orange

Chinese New Year is coming in about 2 weeks. To most, this is a period of many preparations and cleaning to welcome another new year. Some will spring clean their home. Replace the old with the new. Buy new clothings for the whole family, new furniture. I have a friend who will replace everything in her home during this time. She will buy a whole new set of cultery, plates and cups. New set of sofa, curtain, bed, bed sheets. She won't throw away the old. Just buy new to add on. She believes that by doing so, she will have more fortune added in the year ahead.

To me, I don't really observe these practices. This could be I left home to study overseas at a young age. So these practises doesn't seems that important to me. Plus, our family starting from my grandparents' generation are never superstitious, so beside the usual family visits and the reunion dinner, Chinese New Year is never really anything special.

However, there is something I look forward to Chinese New Year. It's the FOOD that I get to eat during this period. Top on the list is Mandarin Orange and Melon seeds. These are seasonal goodies that we only get to eat during Chinese New Years and they do play a significant role in the Chinese New Year festival.

Let me start with Mandarin Orange.



The Mandarin orange or as we called it mandarin is a the fruit of a small citrus tree aka Citrus reticulata, with fruit that looks like the orange. The skin is thin and can be peel easily with your hand.



We eat the flesh of the fruit. There are cooks who will keep the skin of the mandarin, get rid of the whitish stuff on the inside of the skin and sun-dried it. After weeks of sun-bathing under the sun, it will dried up and called "chen pi". This will be added to dessert or soup which will give it a tangy taste.


Now why do we eat Mandarin Orange during Chinese New Year?
To the chinese, a Mandarin orange symbolizes long life. The stem and leaf of the orange symbolize long life, and that's why when we visit people during this time, we will give each other 2 oranges. To some, they will give out oranges which still have the leaves and stem.