By Carol M. Newman
Photography by Lory Hawley
Tri Valley Magazine,
January/February 2008 Issue

Jennifer Yu, owner of Uncle Yu’s restaurants in the Tri Valley, is looking forward to unpacking her family’s 100-year Ching Dynasty dishware and using it to serve her New Year’s feast. At her Lafayette home, Jennifer, who was born in Hong Kong, and her husband, Daniel, from Szechuan and raised in Taiwan, will ring in The Year of The Rat, which begins Feb. 7, by passing out red Lai-See envelopes filled with “lucky money” to their children.

In the kitchen of Amy Liu’s Pleasanton home, the entire family prepares the New Year’s meal. Liu, a sociologist who hails from Hunan and serves on the board of the Pleasnton-based Chinese American Cooperation Council’s Chinese School(CACC), has at least 10 dishes on her menu. They include her husband’s favorite, mala zi ji, a spicy stir fry of chicken cubes, hot peppercorns, capsicum, vinegar and Shou shing wine. In Chinese folklore, it’s said that if you haven’t eaten mala zi ji, you haven’t experienced Hunan Cuisine.

All around the Tri Valley, old New Year’s customs are going to be observed and new ones will be born.

Yi Fang, a volunteer teacher with CACC’s enrichment school at Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, who comes from the region of Shandong, spends her Sunday mornings leading her ‘troupe’ of young women in a colorful Chinese fan dance. The synchronized movements symbolize family as country. Just a few doors down in another classroom, volunteer and fourth degree blackbelt belt Brett Jackson goes mat to mat with his white and yellow belt beginners. The pluck of the guzheng, a traditional Chinese string instrument, ricochets through the corridors as dozens of students anxiously rehearse. In a few short weeks, these students, some as young as four, will perform on stage for the public at the much anticipated annual CACC New Year’s show at Amador Valley High School. Although 2008’s Year of the Rat officially commences Feb.7 and wraps up 15 days later, CACC’s Chinese New Year celebration gets started a little later on Sunday Feb. 17.

The all-day performance, that also includes professional Chinese dancers, draws thousands of Chinese-Americans from around the Tri Valley, many of whom feel a kinship with the carnival-like atmosphere of bright lanterns, Chinese calligraphy and traditional New Year’s decorations.

This is the time of year when the Tri Valley’s burgeoning Chinese community prepares for their most important holiday, the Chinese New Year. Families and friends gather to feast on dozens of dishes, including one of most important, jiaozi, boiled dumplings typically stuffed with pork and shrimp. A staple of New Year’s celebrations, dumplings signify a long-lost good wish, and are considered a propitious food because they resemble tael, an ancient form of Chinese currency. The two big new Asian stores catering to the growing community, Le Asia Supermarket in San Ramon and 99 Ranch Market in Dublin, are stocking up for the celebrations.

Today’s China is a synthesis of nationalities, and its cuisine is just as complex, varying from region to region. Ten different cuisines best illustrate those differences. Sichuan and Guangdong (Cantonese/Hong Kong style) are most commonly known to Westerners. The former is popular for its spicy flavor profiles, the latter coaxes with its mild essences. The other cuisines, less familiar in America, are Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, Fujian, Dongbei, Mandarin, Shandong and Anhui, but all are incorporated into traditional New Year’s feasts.

“New Year’s is like what Thanksgiving is to America,” says Stanley Kueng, manager of Yang’s restaurant in SanRamon. “It’s as much about the food as it is a familyreunion.”

The CACC is the largest community group in the area and participation in the February New Year’s program is strong. “This year, we will have at least 10 different families making jiaozi and other dishes,” says Ellen Lui, one of the event organizers and a CACC board member. Families are as diverse as the foods they will prepare, representing northern and southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and America, too. For guzheng teacher, YiFang, the highlight of the festival is the Shandong steamed buns stuffed with minced pork or duck.

Lui hopes the significance food plays in the festivities will draw a more diverse crowd to the CACC celebration. “Everyone’s welcome,” she emphasizes.

The CACC isn’t the only host of Year of The Rat celebrations in the Tri Valley.

Several Chinese restaurants will host New Year holiday feasts. Uncle Yu’s in Livermore is planning its first celebration. At Willow Tree in Dublin, owner Phillip Chin says, “It’s a big year for us. 2008 marks our restaurant’s 30-year anniversary.” Each year the restaurant is filled with local families for the celebration of Dim Sum, which include har gow, which are shrimp dumplings, and other dishes like the signature Peking Duck, which is air blown for 10 hours to separate the skin from the meat, then roasted until crispy and served with sweet plum sauce, shredded scallions and steamedbuns. At Tri Valley Seafood in Pleasanton, diners will feast on Dim Sum like char siu bao, which are barbecue pork buns, and salt and pepper shrimp served in their shells. But the real event is the seafood, served fresh from the restaurant’s own fish tanks.

Uncle Yu’s chef Peter Tang warms up for the Chinese New Year’s by preparing a bevy of dumplings year round. He chops chicken, prawns and mushrooms before stuffing them inside verdant green wrappers. His Cantonese Steamed Spinach Dumplings are fastened with a neat trifold, steamed and (going against Cantonese tradition) then lightly pan fried. Shanghai Little Dragon Pao, typical of Northern Shanghai, are filled with a mixture of chicken broth, pork, and green onions. Tang expertly pinches off the dough, and the wrappers seal ever more while steaming. Cut into one of these unsweetened juicy buns and a cloud of fragrant chicken broth spills forth. Chef Tang, a Shanghai native, adds his own signature, sprinkling them with sesame seeds. He also makes Szechuan won-tons for the holiday, filling them with boiled pork and shrimp, the flavors punched up with a sweet sauce and an entourage of crunchy sautéed vegetables.

At Yang’s in San Ramon, Taiwanese chef David Yang specializes in Mandarin-style wok cooking. His menu blends traditional Chinese offerings with more modern dishes. Crispy Sea Bass Roll, Coconut Curry Chicken and Basil Eggplant are popular during the Chinese New Year. Manager Stanley Kueng, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, looks forward to his favorite holiday dishes like Nian Gao, which are sweet glutinous rice cakes. Whole chickens and fish, “head, tails, feet—everything intact” also make an appearance at the New Year table. “Serving the entire chicken or fish reminds us of how prosperous we are,” Kueng says.

According to tradition, the celebration begins on New Year’s Eve with dinner hosted at the eldest family member’s home, considered the most important annual family tradition.

Amy Liu’s in-laws come from different corners of the Chinese food landscape. While her mother-in-law’s roots are firmly planted in Tianjing, near Bejing, her father-in-law comes from southern China, where the Chinese New Year’s foods reflect the Guangdong (Cantonese) cultures. Like Keung, Liu’s family roasts a whole fish for prosperity’s sake. Dishes representing the families’ multiple cultures fill the table. From Guangdong there’s roasted piglet, roasted duck, and stir fried vegetables. From Tianjing, there is seafood soup and roasted whole chicken that symbolize good luck and roasted pork with egg, symbolic of good fortune. “But I do miss my mother’s special steamed fishballs, made with chopped fish and rolled with egg and flour,” he says, adding that they represent reunion.

At the new Le Asian Supermarket in San Ramon, families who cook on the holiday will find all they are looking for inside this mammoth 50,000 square footstore. “Families can buy dry seafood, dry scallops,abalone, shark fin and fat choy (thin strands of blackmoss resembling vermicelli noodles used as a veg-etable), says owner Paul Lee. “We have everything peo-ple will need to have good luck in the New Year.”

Exchanging tokens of good luck is a common practice. Jennifer Yu decorates her home in red and gold, the symbols of happiness and wealth. Fruits like pomegranates are showcased as well, their seeds a symbol of fertility. “A pomegranate ripe in seeds represents a large family clan. Pineapple, bananas, tangerines all keep the good luck coming,” she says. In addition to fruit, candy,and nuts, including packages of licorice-prepared watermelon seeds, pistachios, coconut and lotus seeds, are displayed in an octagonal ‘harmony box,’ each piece enhancing one’s chances of good fortune for the coming year.

As Chinese families juggle traditions with contemporary culture, the celebrations of the Chinese New Year holiday are evolving. In the United States, traditional 15 day fetes are cut short and much of the party occurs the first few days of the New Year. Chef Peter Tang and his wife celebrate quietly by themselves by cooking dishes like braised whole fish and drunken chicken. Sometimes, they trek to San Francisco’s Mayflower Seafood Restaurant in the Richmond District for authentic Cantonese seafood. Nick Liang, Uncle Yu’s sommelier, was born in Canton, China, a port city near the South China Sea. He fondly recalls the fried coconut, peanut and sugar dumplings of his youth, so sweet they “tasted like candy.” Like many Chinese families, Liang’s relatives are spread out around the world so he celebrates, instead, with his restaurant family, pouring his favorite Champagnes, Alsatian wines and Burgundys. “Today, anything goes,” Liang says.