The traditional dish “Yu sheng” for Chinese New Year

Date : 02/04/2022 10:00 (JST) Category : Blog

Hello from Singapore! Chinese New Year of 2022 starts on February 1st .

At that time of writing, the town is decorated in red, gold, orange with the new year’s beautiful decorations. People are busy preparing the lucky money envelopes, lucky foods and cleaning their house.

2021 is the year of the Tiger! — **2022 is the year of the Tiger!**

The famous dish “Yu sheng”

Today, I would love to share the famous dish here called “Yu sheng”(also known as yuu sahng or yee sang) with you.

“Yu sheng” is an especially symbolic dish with each ingredient representing something auspicious for the Chinese New Year. There is a similar dish “Osechi” in Japan.

It is a kind of seafood salad with shredded vegetables, raw fish and other ingredients for the good meaning of starting the New Year night.

It traditionally includes the following:

・Raw fish(usually salmon) : abundance throughout the year
・Pomelo or lime : good luck and great prosperity
・Pepper : attracting wealth & treasure
・Oil : immense profit
・Carrots, Green & white radish : good luck, eternal youth and progress with each step
・Peanut crumbs : house filled with gold and silver
・Sesame seeds : business prosperity
・Dressing (usually plum sauce) : sweet relationships
・Deep fried golden pillows : a floor lined with gold

You can eat them in an interesting way.

1.All diners at the table then stand up and proceed to toss all the ingredients into the air with each chopsticks.

2.While tossing, you have to chant the lucky phrase or simply “lo hei” means “scoop it up”.

It is said that the higher you lift, the more good luck will come to you. After tossing everything into the air so many times, the table is very messy. When I saw it for the first time, I was very surprised! This mess represents ”richness” so you don’t care.

This is the picture of “yu sheng” before tossing. It looks so beautiful.