PROSPERITY TOSS

 - a toss for luck, good health, happiness, success, great business deals, good future husbands/wives, excellent exam results on the 7th day of the Lunar New Year. It's today (18th Feb) and the 7th day is also celebrated as EVERYONE'S BIRTHDAY.

Did I miss any wishes out?

"Yusheng"  is a dish of vegetables and minute seafood slices. In a play of mandarin pronounciation which the Chinese adore, "Yu" is a homonym for fish or abundance and "sheng" translates to raw or life. Thus, tossing "Yusheng" brings abundance of good fortune and life in the New Year.

 It consists of extremely fine slices of raw seafood (any fish, salmon, tuna or jelly fish, abalone or prawns) 

mixed with finely shredded raw carrots (luck), green radish (eternal youth), white radish (good business), pickle cucumber, papaya, ginger, garlic, pomelo (smooth sailing) and dried winter melon. 

It is topped with crushed peanuts (household filled with valuable possessions), sesame seeds (flourishing business), golden crackers (floor filled with gold), pepper (wealth), vegetable oil (money flows in) and thick plum sauce (strong ties with those at table).

Thus, every  ingredient bears symbolism for a prosperous year.

     For the uninitiated who are squeamish with raw seafood (although the pieces are so fine, they cannot be seen or tasted), “yusheng” now also comes with cooked seafood or fully vegetarian. 

 All at the table takes a a pair of chopsticks   lifts up the ingredients     and let them drop back into the dish again

 while shouting "lou hei, lou hei" (lift up prosperity and fortune). This tossing and dropping goes on for a few rounds.

     The believers will of course lift the ingredients higher. We keep tossing till the ingredients are well mixed 

and probably all over the table! It is exactly the same as tossing a salad except that in "yusheng," as many as 10 people or more toss the same salad together. 

The higher the toss, the more prosperity for the New Year.

The prosperity toss has been now accepted by other ethnic groups in Malaysia. 

Why not, good fortune should be shared by everyone.

Toss it, raise it high, drop it and let's toss again.

Here are my crazy Mandarin class mates having a "wild" Chinese New Year 2020. 

This is as wild as we 60-plus gals will get! 

It was just luck that Chinese New Year 2020 fell on 25th January - 49 days before lock down and the pandemic.  

Classes have been suspended since and I wonder when we will meet again.

STAY SAFE, STAY WELL "tong xue men" (class mates).

Acknowledgements to CIMB Malaysia for five pictures used in this post.

MY QIGONG FAMILY

      Yep, Us QIGONG GALS ROCK. Lan Boey who painted this T-shirt couldn't have said it any better. 

With our DAILY Zoom qigong 

at 6am, 

10am and 8pm sessions, we are fit to fight Covid-19 anytime. 

BRING IT ON! Actually that was just a metaphorical statement! 

STAY AWAY Covid-19.

OK, I did not say I practised all 3 sessions but I do at least ONE session a day.

 And every Sunday since january at 10am, we have been doing 240 squats continuously with NO BREAK in-between.  I am not kidding, note the time on the picture for evidence. Every dot at the bottom of the pix represents 1 or 2 members, thus more than 40 members have been practising every Sunday. I am the blue bird of course.

Our qigong master, Edwin "laoshi" (in green) leads the class on Sundays with his team at Sri Kembangan and pushes us on for the 240 squats. 

YES, it is OUCH for ONE HOUR but we DID IT.

So, we took a break on 12th February 

for a "wish everybody Gong Xi Fa Cai," 

from all our dedicated teachers 

and qigong members.

 May we live long 

and prosper. 

YES, QIGONG GALS 🙆‍♀️ and GUYS 🙆‍♂️ ROCK. 

Hun Yuan Ling Tong.

PINEAPPLES FOR PROSPERITY?

But before we get to humongous pineapples, here is a flower that resembles a bird

when it is in the budding process. Magnolia liflor - a flock of birds to welcome Spring. Spring Festival or Chinese New Year is celebrated today, year of the Ox, the second of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs.

Shops have put up their pineapple deco weeks ago.

I am always in awe at how much bigger the pineapples get every year. 

    In the Chinese Hokkien dialect, pineapples are called "ong lai."     Ong" (prosperity, luck, fortune) "lai" (coming).  So hanging pineapples for prosperity is a play of words which the Chinese are very fond of. I am not so keen on huge pineapples hanging in my porch, 

so eating pineapple tarts for "ong lai" is close enough. 

But for assurance, I have pasted the good luck Mandarin character "fu" on my front door. 

 Fortune, good luck blessing,

 ALL COME IN PLEASE. 

"FU" in capital letters in English isn't exactly a blessing. Isn't it amazing how languages can have such different meanings and give rise to much misunderstanding! 

This "fu" comes with the Chinese God of Wealth and Money - "Caishen." We have a very popular song for CNY that is blasted repeatedly - "Caishen Dao," Money God has arrived. 

And yet another "fu" but with a FISH. Another play of words from the Chinese. 

In Mandarin, the same pronounciation can have many meanings - homonyms. This is the reason why Mandarin is a difficult language to study. The character fish is pronounced "yu" which rhymes exactly with "yu" which means surplus/in excess. Thus, the fish symblolises "nian nian you yu" which means abundance and surplus every year. 

 Peonies and 

any flowers in red or gold is accepted,

 including clothes. All black is a big NO NO, reserved only for funerals. Here is my Mandarin class mates having our Chinese New Year lunch, 2020.

We had our reunion dinner 

last night. Only the three of us. Opps... four of us since the man of the house

 (Thory) sat himself at the table while we were still getting stuff from the kitchen.

Xin Nian Kwai Le (the mandarin character is "chun" (Spring).