Gung Hay Fat Choy!!!

Chinese New Year…the year of the Ox this year will be celebrated this Monday, January 26. Time for filling those red envelopes for the kids. Ahhh…I remember the good old days of receiving envelopes. What a thrill that was!

I had my first bank account with the Bowery Savings Bank started by my elementary school, P.S. 23. Once a week, we would fill out a small envelope with any amount of money-even a nickel to add to our bank book, watching it grow. I remember a boy named Danny who always had more money to deposit than the rest of the class. He was the rich kid. But the week after Chinese New Year…now that was riches galore and every child’s deposit envelope would be bulging.

As I grew older and some years were better than others, I liked it if my parents socialized. Meant more red envelopes for us. The brand new crisp dollar bills folded in half or triplet were always a sight for sore eyes.
The envelopes were pretty too but I didn’t appreciate them then.

Since my father had the grocery store, we would begin to stock the store with the traditional Chinese New year candies and sweets…sugared lotus root, candied melon chunks, dried watermelon seeds to name a few and my favorite, sweetened coconut strips. We would have to make bags of it to sell. We also had to put out the ingredients for the morning meal. Mostly vegetarian stuff…bean thread, black moss seaweed which always looked like black hair to us, ginko nut, lotus seed and dried bean curd.



My mother would steamed her wonderfully delicious lo bak go (turnip cake) and the triple “head” fat go tay cupcakes. She would make dumplings, steamed and fried. There would be a centerpiece of a huge Chinese grapefruit (pomelo) surrounded by oranges and tangerines. A red lacquered box filled with the sweets and candies would be off to the side. (you can see these in the photo above off to the right hand side) Kathy and I would get dressed in our Chinese jackets hand-sewn by my mother and passed down to our girls. Amazing.


Watercolor by Kristina Lagoda of Nikki & Kris in our Chinese Jackets

I would always be scared of the firecrackers and definitely the cherry bombs. I didn't like them but I did like the lion dances and hearing the boom, boom, boom of the drum, the clang, clang, clang of the gong.