Janet S. Wong - Author of Acclaimed Children's Books

Here is an article I wrote called "Moon Soup," that talks about lunar new year customs. This article was originally published in the January 1997 issue of Scholastic's Instructor Magazine (Intermediate Edition).

Moon Soup

Even though I am Chinese and Korean, I grew up thinking of the Lunar New Year as Chinese New Year. Teachers always called it that; newspapers, too. And my Korean mother never corrected me. The only Korean thing we did was to eat a soup called duk gook, which was supposed to make me one year wiser – or one year older, at least. The way she cooked it, with cheap beef and frozen rice disks, I hated it. Often I would play a game, taking a bite out of each disk so it looked like a crescent moon. My bowl was a scene from outer space, scallion spaceships swimming from moon to moon, dodging asteroids of beef and comets of scrambled egg.

Chinese Traditions

Everything we did was Chinese, or so I thought. Lunar New Year's Eve we cleaned the house, took showers, clipped our nails, changed into our newest clothes, and waited for midnight. At midnight my brother and I would set off firecrackers, to scare evil spirits and wake the neighbors' dogs.

If New Year's Day fell on a weekday, my family usually did nothing to celebrate it except to look in the paper to see what animal's year it was, so we could tell people – who expected us to know, since we were Chinese. We usually celebrated the new year on the weekend, when we would go to Chinatown and buy roast meats, freshly killed chicken and fish, and Chinese vegetables. Then we would visit my Chinese grandparents. When they opened the door, my brother and I would shout (in their Chungsan dialect of Cantonese) "Gong hee fat choy, lee cee do loy!" Roughly translated, this means "Best wishes for the new year; give me a red envelope with money!"

My grandparents, who had taught us to do this, would then produce small red envelopes with gold Chinese writing on them and anywhere from $5 to $20 inside. Usually the money took the form of one-dollar bills, and I would proudly count the dollars in their dialect, which I use in my poem "One to Ten" from Good Luck Gold:

One to Ten

Yut yee sam see*
Count in Cantonese with me!

Eun look chut bot
Can you tell me what we've got?

Gow sup. One to ten!
(Could you say that once again?)

– from Good Luck Gold

*Author's Note: In standard Cantonese, "four" is pronounced "say." If you'd like, you can change the poem to read: "Yut yee sam say / Count in Cantonese today!"

Though the red envelope was the most exciting part about Chinese New Year fro my brother, the best part for me was baking homemade sticky rice cakes called gin dui, covered with sesame seeds and filled with sweet bean paste. My grandmother made them the way I describe baking in "Grandmother's Almond Cookies" (from A Suitcase of Seaweed). Like many "old world" cooks, she threw in a handful of this and a pinch of that. We fried them until they turned golden brown, until they "came alive."

Korean Traditions

Several years ago, for no known reason, I started to feel more Korean, I started to wonder about my mother's childhood in Korea, and started to read Korean stories. At the peak of this heritage thing, a friend asked me to join her for lunch at an expensive Korean restaurant. It was near the new year, and she ordered duk gook. I warned her it was awful stuff. She ordered it anyway, an even managed to convince me to try some of it. Remembering my mother's soup, I knew I would hate it. And – as you may have guessed – I was wrong. This was different. With fresh, delicately chewy rice disks and slivers of tender beef, it was so delicious I asked for a bowl on my own!

After eating this meal, I decided to ask my mother about how she celebrated Lunar New Year in her rural Korean village. To my surprise, some of the things she talked about were things I had considered Chinese. There was a New Year's Eve full of housecleaning and hair washing. There was a Korean version of the Chinese red envelope: a small red silk purse worn at the waist, a joo muh ni, that grandparents and older neighbors would stuff with money upon hearing a child shout out the New Year greeting, "Sae hae bok mani bahd oo sae yo!" There was a lot of bowing to elders, which I knew to be a Chinese custom too. And there were the new clothes – brightly-colored traditional Korean clothes, han bok, the arms of my mother's dress striped like a rainbow.

But, unlike the way I was taught, my mother did not wear her new clothes at midnight. From midnight until dawn, she worked in a kitchen full of women and girls, cooking and talking and laughing, wiping her hands on the old year's clothes. She and her cousins pounded and kneaded the dough for pale pink or green or white rice cakes called song pyun, shaped like smiling eyes. Her aunts chopped vegetables and meat and her mother smashed and minced garlic for the 30 to 40 different dishes that would decorate the New Year's table.

And once this was done, the women and girls, giddy and tired, changed into their fresh clothes and sat down to bowls of warm duk gook – a perfectly wise way to start the new year.

– Janet S. Wong

Return to Special Programs


		Here is an article I wrote called "Moon Soup," that talks about lunar new year customs. This article was originally published in the January 1997 issue of Scholastic's Instructor Magazine (Intermediate Edition). Moon Soup Even though I am Chinese and Korean, I grew up thinking of the Lunar New Year as Chinese New Year. Teachers always called it that; newspapers, too. And my Korean mother never corrected me. The only Korean thing we did was to eat a soup called duk gook, which was supposed to make me one year wiser – or one year older, at least. The way she cooked it, with cheap beef and frozen rice disks, I hated it. Often I would play a game, taking a bite out of each disk so it looked like a crescent moon. My bowl was a scene from outer space, scallion spaceships swimming from moon to moon, dodging asteroids of beef and comets of scrambled egg. Chinese Traditions Everything we did was Chinese, or so I thought. Lunar New Year's Eve we cleaned the house, took showers, clipped our nails, changed into our newest clothes, and waited for midnight. At midnight my brother and I would set off firecrackers, to scare evil spirits and wake the neighbors' dogs. If New Year's Day fell on a weekday, my family usually did nothing to celebrate it except to look in the paper to see what animal's year it was, so we could tell people – who expected us to know, since we were Chinese. We usually celebrated the new year on the weekend, when we would go to Chinatown and buy roast meats, freshly killed chicken and fish, and Chinese vegetables. Then we would visit my Chinese grandparents. When they opened the door, my brother and I would shout (in their Chungsan dialect of Cantonese) "Gong hee fat choy, lee cee do loy!" Roughly translated, this means "Best wishes for the new year; give me a red envelope with money!" My grandparents, who had taught us to do this, would then produce small red envelopes with gold Chinese writing on them and anywhere from $5 to $20 inside. Usually the money took the form of one-dollar bills, and I would proudly count the dollars in their dialect, which I use in my poem "One to Ten" from Good Luck Gold: One to Ten Yut yee sam see* Count in Cantonese with me! Eun look chut bot Can you tell me what we've got? Gow sup. One to ten! (Could you say that once again?) – from Good Luck Gold Author's Note: In standard Cantonese, "four" is pronounced "say." If you'd like, you can change the poem to read: "Yut yee sam say / Count in Cantonese today!" Though the red envelope was the most exciting part about Chinese New Year fro my brother, the best part for me was baking homemade sticky rice cakes called gin dui, covered with sesame seeds and filled with sweet bean paste. My grandmother made them the way I describe baking in "Grandmother's Almond Cookies" (from A Suitcase of Seaweed). Like many "old world" cooks, she threw in a handful of this and a pinch of that. We fried them until they turned golden brown, until they "came alive." Korean Traditions Several years ago, for no known reason, I started to feel more Korean, I started to wonder about my mother's childhood in Korea, and started to read Korean stories. At the peak of this heritage thing, a friend asked me to join her for lunch at an expensive Korean restaurant. It was near the new year, and she ordered duk gook. I warned her it was awful stuff. She ordered it anyway, an even managed to convince me to try some of it. Remembering my mother's soup, I knew I would hate it. And – as you may have guessed – I was wrong. This was different. With fresh, delicately chewy rice disks and slivers of tender beef, it was so delicious I asked for a bowl on my own! After eating this meal, I decided to ask my mother about how she celebrated Lunar New Year in her rural Korean village. To my surprise, some of the things she talked about were things I had considered Chinese. There was a New Year's Eve full of housecleaning and hair washing. There was a Korean version of the Chinese red envelope: a small red silk purse worn at the waist, a joo muh ni, that grandparents and older neighbors would stuff with money upon hearing a child shout out the New Year greeting, "Sae hae bok mani bahd oo sae yo!"* There was a lot of bowing to elders, which I knew to be a Chinese custom too. And there were the new clothes – brightly-colored traditional Korean clothes, han bok, the arms of my mother's dress striped like a rainbow. But, unlike the way I was taught, my mother did not wear her new clothes at midnight. From midnight until dawn, she worked in a kitchen full of women and girls, cooking and talking and laughing, wiping her hands on the old year's clothes. She and her cousins pounded and kneaded the dough for pale pink or green or white rice cakes called song pyun, shaped like smiling eyes. Her aunts chopped vegetables and meat and her mother smashed and minced garlic for the 30 to 40 different dishes that would decorate the New Year's table. And once this was done, the women and girls, giddy and tired, changed into their fresh clothes and sat down to bowls of warm duk gook – a perfectly wise way to start the new year. – Janet S. Wong Return to Special Programs
		Copyright © 1999 Janet S. Wong. All Rights Reserved.