Family Tradition Essay

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Family Tradition Essay On the eve of almost every Chinese New Year our family gets together to watch the Chinese New Year show on TV and have a special meal, which always includes “Jiao Zi” (or dumplings). This tradition started when my father was a child, while he grew up in Northern China where Jiao Zi used to be the best meal a family could ever have. It was always reserved for special occasions like the Chinese New Year, or when the whole family gets together. The history of Jiao Zi goes back to some 500-600 years ago. The shape of Jiao Zi is like a half-moon and similar to ancient Chinese gold or silver currency, so they symbolized wealth. From generation to generation, Chinese people have viewed Jiao Zi as a sign of good fortune. When you have a full pot of Jiao Zi on the New Year’s eve, it means good fortune for your family in the coming year. Two winters ago, for the Chinese New Year my family went to Maryland to be with my grandma, aunts and uncles, a total of a dozen people. No exceptions, we all had to come together to make Jiao Zi, when it was New Year’s eve. The whole family was like a team sitting around a big table working as if in an assembly line. But before we all sat down to work, my grandma had already prepared the best stuffing called “three fresh” using her secret recipe. The recipe included shrimp, chicken and cabbage mixed with sugar, salt, pepper, oil and green onions. Her secret was not in the ingredients but how she mixed them together, the order and her way of mixing it or in her words “beating it.” As the Chinese say, “the older the ginger, the hotter it gets,” so I guess that the older you get, the better you get at making Jiao Zi. As a matter of fact, no one in my family can do a better job than grandma could, and she was definitely a little ostentatious about it. My aunt was an expert in making the wraps. She first kneaded

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