Gung hee fat choy!

Aloha Nick,

Gung hee fat choy! This means "Happy New Year" in Chinese. As I mentioned before, Hawaii has a lot of people with different ethnicities, including Chinese. Instead of following the traditional calendar (January 1 = New Years!), Chinese follow the lunar calendar and on February 10th,  they celebrated New Years. Not only did we get to eat certain types of food, like char siu bao (pronounced "char sue bow" and also known in Hawaiian as manapua, pronounced "mana poo a"), but we also got to serve all our elders tea. The manapua is like steamed bread with meat (pork) inside; Parker, Elle and Brandt say they eat it for snack sometimes and even for lunch. As you can see in my picture, it was a little too much for me to eat by myself but it was really delicious.

 

Serving tea is a cultural tradition that marks the beginning of the first day of Chinese New Year and has been passed on for generations. It is a ritual to show humility, respect, gratitude and thankfulness; everyone in the family pours tea to the elders, starting with the great grandparents (they are 94!) and then to all the aunties and uncles. 

 

 

Last but not least, we served tea to Parker, Elle and Brandt's mom and dad. Before we served the tea to each person though, we put candied fruits and vegetables in the tea cup which made the tea really yummy and sweet! The candied items are supposed to bring good fortune and much success for the whole year! (We even got a few bags of  candy for ourselves....).

 

 

Parker said this year it is the Year of the Snake, his zodiac sign (he was born in 2001), which should bring Parker extra luck and even more happiness. I couldn't remember my year of birth but maybe when I get home, you can tell me and I can look it up online.

 

Our food adventure didn't stop with the Chinese New Year as Uncle Todd and Aunty Kwan Lynne got us Hawaiian food as well. The most traditional Hawaiian food includes rice, macaroni salad, lomi ("low-me") salad (tomatoes + salmon + maui onions, poi (comes from mashing taro, like a potato but purple in color, and adding water + sugar) and lau lau, which is pork or chicken wrapped in a taro leaf and cooked. 

 

 

 

All of it was really yummy but I have to say that the poi sort of tasted like touthpaste.....Parker, Elle and Brandt agreed.

Well, gotta run, but things are swell here, and warm.........I will really miss Hawaii. It was such a different place to visit and to think, its still part of the United States and so far away from any other land mass. Let's try to make it back here again, but if not, I'll sure have special memories (and pictures!).

As they say in Hawaii, "aloha hui hou" (or until we meet again),

ROBERT

PS Uncle Todd says I'll be visiting his Mom and Dad in California.....I'll write soon.