Night Scenes

After dinner, we decided to take a leisurely stroll around the food street, and stumbled upon the Winter Solstice Street Market.

Traditionally, the Chinese marked the Winter Solstice (22 December) as the start of New Year preparations. In ancient times, this time of the year meant that the harvest has been completed, and all family members that have left the ancestral home to work in other provinces would travel home to reunite with their families in preparation for the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year celebrations. The Winter Solstice would be celebrated with a family reunion dinner, and the eating of “tang yuen” (literal translation: soup dumplings) – round glutinous rice dumplings boiled in a ginger syrup soup. The modern versions of these dumplings now have fillings of peanut, black sesame or red bean.

Here are some sights (minus the sounds and smells) of the night market…

There was a mini open-air concert going on…

There were food stalls selling fruits, snacks and other traditional tid-bits. I love the smell of the chestnuts being coal-roasted (in the metal drum seen in the right hand corner)…

Fruits painstakingly and neatly arranged and displayed… it is the season for rambutans, persimmons, starfruits and Chinese fragrant pears!

We bought more durians! Yum! The aromas were so strong that they filled the car on the drive home even though the durians were in the boot!

Herbal teas to quench your thirst and to relieve “heatiness” from the body…

Traditional Teochew rice dumplings…

Dried scallops, dried sea cucumbers and dried oysters… all essential ingredients in Chinese New Year celebratory dishes…

Beautiful large (very large, I might add), plump dried oysters or “hou si” (meaning “good tidings”)…

The sky was clear, the weather cool… a beautiful end to a very pleasant evening!

Copyright © 2003 Renee Kho. All rights reserved.
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