Year of the tiger, p.16
Year of the Tiger, page 16
ALICE: And I think that, to me, also showed me kinda like how our friendship has evolved, in the sense that you felt safe to do that. You know, it wasn’t like something I asked or just, you know, ’cause I didn’t know. I just wanted to interview you. But the fact that you felt comfortable and safe enough to do that, that was meaningful for me. I think that’s ultimately…the world we wanna create: this sense where everybody can just be their full selves and not have to explain anything or just worry about anything. That’s the future, that’s what we’re working toward. We’re not really there yet, but I think, you know, constantly about this idea of building toward justice. And I think this is just one way that—one example of us showing the world all the different ways that we can just support each other in that collective effort. So, yeah, that’s kinda just the beauty, too, right? That we can all kind of show up for each other in these big ways or obvious ways, but also a lotta ways that are not apparent as well. I think that’s what happens in friendships, too. It’s that ebb and flow.
GRACE: That’s so lovely. I’m curious. I think that this can be a tough question to answer, but what do you hope that your friendship brings each other?
ALICE: Since I am older than Sandy, I think one thing I really do hope in terms of our continued friendship is just to help Sandy realize all her dreams and goals and to really encourage her ambitions. Because I wanna see her succeed in whatever she wants to do. That, to me, is one of my personal goals of making sure that Sandy realizes she has so many choices and talents, and she brings a lot to whatever she wants to do. And however I can facilitate that in a subtle way or not so subtle way, that, to me, is one of the things that I hope is part of our friendship, is the gentle nudging of, like, “Apply for this.” “Try that.” “Do this.” And again, this is the bossy side of me, but, you know, I think we all need somebody who has that other perspective, right? Sometimes we talk ourselves out of doing things because we think, Oh, I’m not—maybe I’m not the right fit or just Maybe it’s out of my lane, things like that. But I’m gonna be that secret person that whispers in Sandy’s ear like [loud whisper], “Do it! Do it!” Yeah, I can be creepy. If that’s what it takes, I’ll be creepy, you know. And I love it. I’ll text her, like, a creepy GIF, you know, whatever it takes. I’m just ready for Sandy to take over the world, and I’d like to help lay the groundwork for that.
SANDY: Yeah. That groundwork, by the way, also includes Alice promoting a hashtag every now and then that is #WestwardHo, because she is adamant about me moving to California, okay?
ALICE: Yeah. So, eventually, Sandy is going to relocate to the West Coast. And I’ll just say, totally randomly sometimes, “Westward Ho.” I’ll just pop it in a text: “Westward Ho. Don’t forget: Westward Ho.” It’s not happening yet, but it’s in the works. And I think the universe will provide, but yeah, #WestwardHo is one of my guerrilla campaigns. It’s Westward Ho 2024 or bust!
Year of the Tiger Crossword[*]
ACROSS
Watch it jiggle (6)
Hot yoga (6)
A form of love (6)
Northerners (12)
I *heart* ______ (2)
Resistance is futile (7)
A lifeline (8)
#____TheVote (4)
Cross-training routine (12)
It’s alive! (8)
DOWN
Cassandra-esque (6)
Every day (8)
Care is ______ (14)
Suck on it (7)
Hoosier city (12)
“Greetings, Mork!” (8)
Not so easy (9)
A fave word (4)
Shady scam (8)
Peachy keen (8)
Show me the money (9)
Skip Notes
* For accessibility, the number in parentheses after each clue indicates the number of letters. Answers can be found on this page.
Lunar New Year Memories
I wonder what it was like for my parents to move to Indianapolis from Hong Kong without any friends, family, or familiarity with American culture in the 1970s. Two years after they arrived, they became first-time parents with me and later parents to my two sisters, Emily and Grace. One central part of missing home is longing for Chinese food traditions. When I was in grade school, our family took weeks off and went back to Hong Kong for Lunar New Year, and listening to Shandongnese spoken loudly by extended family, smelling incense and diesel fuel in the crowded streets, and filling my belly with the best food were my strongest Hong Kong sense memories.
One of our family trips to Hong Kong during the month of Lunar New Year. We are visiting Victoria Peak, the highest hill on the island and a popular tourist attraction. From left: Dad, Mom, me, my paternal grandmother 林國芬 Lín Guó Fēn, and my sister Emily.
* * *
…
During the weeklong celebrations, a revolving door of guests visited my grandparents’ two-bedroom apartment in North Point, bringing gifts such as fruit or alcohol and 紅包 hóngbāo, lucky red envelopes with embossed decorative gold designs, for the kids. The amount a kid received was based on a complex social calculus of the giver’s proximal relationship with their family, with stinginess or generosity as variables. My sisters and I never experienced this jackpot before, and we carefully stored all our envelopes in a shoebox for a major shopping spree. Reader, I never got that shopping spree—Mom took all our red envelopes and bought us a Texas Instruments Speak and Spell “toy” without our knowledge. Can you spell j-u-s-t-i-c-e? I can spell it, but I still don’t have it. To quote from the film Heathers: “Oh, the humanity!” I can still taste the umami-less betrayal today.
With the guests who flowed in and out of the apartment came plates of fish and chive dumplings made by my 婆婆 pópo grandmother, who made everything à la minute. Chinese food has to be hot and fresh, and hospitality dictated a continual flow of dumplings until the last guest left. I remember seeing pópo cook in a small, crowded kitchen and being so tired afterward she didn’t have any appetite to eat. Because of the Patriarchy, she usually ate dinner last because she was always cooking successive dishes in the heat (turning on the air conditioner was a rarity). I think about my pópo and whether she got to eat steam-filled dumplings bursting with savory juices only as a child, not as a wife or mother. Did she even get to dip her dumplings in soy sauce and vinegar, or nibble at a clove of raw garlic as accompaniment? Who served her and encouraged her to eat more in her later years?
Sometimes I see my mom tired after she makes dumplings, but with our family, everyone except me participates in making them (I used to peel shrimp, but I am retired). Mom is in charge of making the dough and filling (the most important parts). Dad rolls the dough into long, thick ropes and cuts them; then he creates individual wrappers by rotating the coin-shaped dough with a flick of a wrist while the other hand rolls them with a wooden baton. Each wrapper gets gently tossed onto the countertop with a dusting of flour, then Mom and my sisters take the wrappers before they get stuck together, add the filling, and fold the edges into a scalloped pattern. I am the self-appointed documentarian, taking photos and videos so that we no-longer-young-ones can save these memories.
When the Center for Asian American Media collected oral histories about Lunar New Year in 2015, I interviewed my mom, the second most extroverted person in our family, so that our Chinese American story could be preserved for the future. Preserving something doesn’t mean it is trapped in the past. Preservation of a recipe or a food tradition is a guide for, rather than an arbiter of, “authenticity.” Like any fermented sauce, time adds flavor, nuance, and depth to stories. They remain alive and available for our nourishment.
Mom (left) and me in a small recording booth at StoryCorps San Francisco, which closed in 2018.
Some families ski or camp together; Wongs make food and eat together. Talking about, planning, or dreaming about the next meal and remembering meals from the past—this is our love language, cultural wisdom, history, and family legacy.
ALICE WONG: My name is Alice Wong. I am forty years old. Today is February 12, 2015. We’re at the San Francisco Public Library at StoryCorps, and I’m here to interview my mom today, Bobby Wong.
BOBBY WONG: My name’s Bobby Wong. I’m sixty-five years old. And today is February the twelfth, 2015. I’m also at the San Francisco Library.
ALICE: And you’re here to talk to me! [laughs]
BOBBY: Yes, my daughter. Yeah, my oldest daughter, Alice Wong.
ALICE: Oh, yay. So, today, you know, we’re gonna have a chat about our memories and about the Lunar New Year and about the different ways we’ve celebrated it in the past and today.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALICE: So, tell me a little bit about where you were born. And when you grew up, what was 新年 xīnnián, Lunar New Year, what was that like for you?
BOBBY: Okay, I was born in Hong Kong a long time ago—
[Alice chuckles]
BOBBY: —in 1949. So, in Hong Kong, it’s, you know, before I immigrated to the U.S., we celebrate Lunar New Year. It’s a major holiday for the Chinese. So—
ALICE: It’s like the biggest.
BOBBY: The biggest.
ALICE: Bigger than 中秋節, zhōng qiū jié, Mid-Autumn Festival.
BOBBY: Yes, yes. Yeah. Because this is the day for the family reunited together. So, it’s—how to say it…I would say bigger than Christmas, has a similar meaning. But that involves the whole clan, you know, village.
ALICE: Yeah.
BOBBY: And then province, state, city, and the country to celebrate all together on the same day.
ALICE: So it’s really kinda like the biggest important day of the year, at least, for Chinese people.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALICE: So tell me, how did you celebrate it as a kid, or what are some of your fondest memories regarding xīnnián?
BOBBY: Okay. Yeah, when I was a kid, I don’t have to prepare anything for the New Year.
[Alice laughs]
BOBBY: Everything—my mother will prepare that. All I have is fun. And the things I like the most is eating the money dumpling that is only once in a year for the Lunar New Year.
ALICE: How would you say that in Mandarin, “money dumpling”?
BOBBY: 錢水餃 qián shuǐjiǎo. Yeah.
ALICE: And do many people, other people, do that? Or was that just something your family did?
BOBBY: This only pertains to the northern part of China.
ALICE: Ah!
BOBBY: And I don’t know if, you know, other northern people does this.
ALICE: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: But I know the—
ALICE: Shandong.
BOBBY: —Shandongnese, Shandongnese, yeah, do that.
ALICE: And we’re both—both you and Dad are 山東人 Shāndōng rén [Shandongnese people], and it’s so funny that, you know, you guys met in Hong Kong.
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
ALICE: And there are so few northern Chinese people there. So it’s pretty unique to have northern traditions in Hong Kong, right?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALICE: So what is a money dumpling and how does it work? And tell me about your fun memories with it.
BOBBY: Okay. The money dumpling is—how to say it—during Lunar New Year, the tradition is to prepare ten things. Ten means perfect. Like candy, this and that, or obviously, money is the important thing. And then you only put ten dimes in the dumplings.
ALICE: Mm-hmm.
BOBBY: And then you make a lot of dumplings for the whole family, about five to ten people, you know, and then you only have ten dumplings mixed in it. So it was really fun to poke to see which dumpling has something hardened, you know, with your chopstick—how to say—[chuckles] put it in. And, “Oh! This one must have the coin, you know, the metal inside,” you just pick right away.
ALICE: So it’s like an eating treasure hunt.
BOBBY: Yes. Yes. Eating treasure hunt.
ALICE: And how many hundreds of dumplings would you make, say, for your family? I mean, how many dumplings would you make in one meal?
BOBBY: Okay, we have six people in our family. My mom will make one hundred fifty to two hundred.
ALICE: Oh my gosh!
BOBBY: So, because you’ve got to have leftovers for next few days because we don’t want to run out of things, so you’ve got to make more. Yeah.
ALICE: It seems like New Year’s, definitely, the one time you share your prosperity, even if you’re poor, right? It’s all about new clothes—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALICE: —and eating a lot and having guests over and celebrating, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALICE: So even people who have modest means, do they usually get a new outfit every New Year?
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Yes, yes.
ALICE: What else did you do during the New Year? Did everybody in your family get new outfits?
BOBBY: Yes. Yeah. The—how to say—I grew up in a poor family, but during New Year, all the kids in the family have new clothes. And sometimes, I remember at one point, my parents went out and borrowed money to make a feast and buy new clothes for us.
ALICE: Wow. And that was pretty common among poor people, right?
BOBBY: Yes, mm-hmm.
ALICE: In terms of you do what you gotta do to keep up that tradition.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALICE: Even if it puts you in debt a little bit.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah. You try to pay off the debt before the New Year, and then you, after you pay off, then you can borrow some for the New Year!
ALICE: So pay off last year’s New Year’s debt to go into debt again for the New Year!
BOBBY: Yeah. [laughs] Coming year. But when we have more money left over, then we will always have a red color. Red color, red flower print, something like that, yeah.
ALICE: And what is symbolic about the color red in Chinese culture?
BOBBY: I think the red means happiness.
ALICE: Mm-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah, like a wedding everything is red. And New Year and the posting, writing paper, all red. And so, we wear red clothes. Not totally red, but just one or two garments are red, like a red hat or red blouse, something like that.
ALICE: Mm-hmm. It’s a meaningful color in Chinese culture.
BOBBY: Yes. Yeah.
ALICE: And it’s also a lot of posters that go up, or signs that go up, that you post on New Year’s Day. What are some of the characters on the signs?
BOBBY: Like double happiness, 囍, means 喜 xǐ, happiness, twice. And then 恭喜发财 gōng xǐ fā cái, wishing someone prosperity and good fortune.
ALICE: Mm-hmm.
BOBBY: Those are the few characters we wrote. And we wrote poems and posted them on both sides—both sides of the door.
ALICE: In Chinese calligraphy, right?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALICE: And that is another kind of tradition, too, right? This kinda artwork and things and then posting them. Because, basically, anybody can do that, right? They just—all they need is ink and paper. So anybody can do that, right?
BOBBY: No, no. How to say it…This also shows your family’s education status. So if you lack education, then you don’t write it by yourself. You purchase it.
ALICE: Ah.
BOBBY: Or you ask people who’re famous who’s good to write the poem, write good calligraphy. You ask for it.
ALICE: Wow. So it really is kind of like an outward showing to everyone that this is who we are. This is, you know, our status. Or no?
BOBBY: Not really. Because everyone does the same. Yeah, everyone does the same.
ALICE: But you can tell the difference, with some people, they actually have calligraphy skills.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALICE: And other people have store-bought products.
BOBBY: Right, store.
ALICE: So there is some difference, right?
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The writing, yeah, yeah. You can see that kinda like I see the status of the family, yeah.
ALICE: The education level.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah.
ALICE: And I remember the paper is always so pretty because it is always red with flecks of gold, right?
BOBBY: Always.
ALICE: It’s always, like—I remember seeing that as a kid, and it’s, like, such pretty paper, right? And yet, it’s very common and cheap, right? Or is it—
BOBBY: No, no. The red paper with gold is most expensive. Yeah. Lots of people don’t use that.
ALICE: Really?
BOBBY: Yeah, expensive.
ALICE: I remember 爺爺 yéyé, Grandfather, used to do calligraphy, and I remember seeing that beautiful red paper that’s handmade as the background against the large black calligraphy. It’s always just so elegant.
