As a city dweller that is disconnected with the weather, the farms and nature…. it is quite easily that I have those festivals that were once upon a time so important for survival forgotten… And I just did. I skipped the Winter Solstice. The longest night reminds people that winter is here and the Earth(the northern hemisphere) will become frigid and cold in the coming two months. To compensate for my absentmindedness, i am pulling out an old article from my files about this solar marker and the community spirits that it once induced and including it back in this blog, just to remind myself how forgetful and fragmented this world I live in has become….
The article was published in Making Waves, WICC, winter, 2007
Doing the Winter ….The East Asian Way of Spending the Longest Night
The Winter Solstice, or the longest night of the year, has had immense importance in many northern cultures from antiquity. This event marks the beginning of the sun’s next cycle. Although the coldest days are yet to come, this day also promises that the frigid land will soon be warmed by the sun’s returning rays.
This astronomical event is marked by festivals and traditions in many cultures. Many of us see the sun’s return metaphorically as the triumphant return of light and goodness, defeating the power of darkness and evil. Some cultures celebrate with fertility rituals, some with fire or light festivals, some with high offerings and prayers to deities by kings, queens, chiefs or rulers. These colourful and vibrant festivals are full of the celebration of life, yet, I also read them as a performance of discontentment, or acts to escape from – rather than acknowledging or accepting – the frigid reality of winter. They are focusing on the future, hope and change, or in other words, they want to forget about winter or doing away winter to a certain degree, if not altogether. However, being an immigrant that is not used to winter’s strong presence, I longed for tactics and means to help me to come before winter face to face, and to accept it is it is. This took me to remember a low-key festival that my family practised on the longest night. It has an interesting name – Doing the Winter!!!
Winter Solstice in Chinese characters is “Dongzhi”, which means the extreme of winter. While winter famine and death were not uncommon in older days, people traditionally focused on being together on this longest night by making and eating a dessert out of sticky rice flour together. The white tiny balls are called Tongyuan, which literally means mini balls in soup; phonetically, it sounds like re-union. Sticky rice has a high calorie and high protein content; it stays in our stomachs, keeping us filled and warm for a long time. Sugar and beans further enhance these properties. Nutritious content is one important thing, equally importantly is that it is an engaging and community building process where family members and neighbours spent time together. By tradition, family members and extended family members would gather to make these darling white puffy thing together as a way to squander the long night together. By tradition, there should be enough made for sharing with neighbours, so everyone should have something to last through the most bitter days of the year.
My grandmother, who was from the southern part of China, used mineral-rich unrefined block sugar, cut in cubes, to put in the middle of her dumplings. Others may have used red bean or lotus bean paste as the protein centre. Since making rice balls was such fun for children, my brothers and I loved to join my grandmother when we were little. I remember how exciting it was to see those balls becoming light and translucent as they were cooked in hot water.
In some places, rather than filling the dumplings with red bean paste or a sweet centre, the rice balls were used as a soup base. Some parts of China and Korea make Tongyuan in red bean soup, while Japan and Vietnam stick around with the round white sticky glutinous balls.
In the northern part of China, where cold winds blow hard, people make spicy dumplings (ji-o zi) in soup. These dumpling soups are good for warming a person up to his/her ear lobes. The shape of the dumplings also resembles this easily chilled out body part. It was believed that it was the invention of a doctor, Zhang Zhong Jing, who was overwhelmed and felt sorry for his poor patients with chilblains at their ears. So he set up a tent and a large pot in the middle of the town-square to make and handout a special spicy dumpling soup to the visiting poor, so that they could be warmed and healed. Soon everyone learned the recipe and spent the longest night by making dumplings together and sending some to neighbours.
As the world continues to globalize, become westernized and commodified, even low-key or humble practices like food-making in the kitchen are being threatened by the popularity of pre-packaged food. Or, at least that is the case in the cities. My family stopped making dumplings altogether when my grandmother died. My family members are now scattered; and have hardly spent any Dongzhi together for the last 10 years. I Sometimes wonder if they are longing for the tactile glutinous flour fun and the warm feeling of the Tongyuan in the stomach like me.
While high key cultural practices tend to be appropriated to serve the agenda of those in power to serve their agenda, cultural elements with a low key or weak presence generally have ability to escape such fate. They are also found to be able to ingraining into the visceral as well as the spirit of a culture as endure the test of time. I sure hope the realistic and community building Dong Zhi will continue on. Otherwise, while the winter is dark and bitter, this collective forgetfulness maybe the true longest night and bitter winter for our age and for the generations to come. So here I am, inviting everyone to make TongYuan or JiaoZi together, and share it with our family, friends and neighbours, or dig out your own heartwarming winter traditions for the longest night.