冬至快乐！汤圆！汤圆！

today is dong zhi (冬至), a traditional chinese festival that marks the coming of winter. strangely, other festival such as chinese new year, lantern festival, duan wu jie, all got stories of how and why the festival is celebrated, but not dong zhi. haha or does anyone know?

well according to mum, long ago, when winter comes, most daily activity would be hindered and winter would be a very tough time for most people to get through the bitter cold.

so celebrating dong zhi is equal to having a small feast before the long, cold winter. cos after the winter in spring, they would be celebrating new year. dong zhi is also a time to worship our ancester. hmm...i think it's because we need to burn something for our ancester to eat also during their winter up there;p

i think it's hard for me to imagine their situation as living in in Malaysia all my life i've never experience the cold of winter before. the weather here it's either sunny, rainy, or foggy.

for me the highlight of dong zhi is of course the "汤圆" (tang yuan), as it's the only time of the year we get to eat it. nowadays tang yuan comes in a variety of choice but i still sincerely prefer those home made ones.



image taken from here

i can still remember from my childhood memories the fun of rolling the tang yuan and making it into other shapes as it seems like playing plastesin.

anyway, i would like to wish you all a happy dong zhi.