Gung Hee Fat Choy - Part III: The 2nd Day Feast

Because my mom's family was Buddhist, Chinese New Year's day was always a strictly vegetarian day, when all we ate was jai.   However, that doesn't mean that we didn't have big feasts for Chinese New Year.  Quite the contrary, we would have multiple big dinners in fact.   Whenever we go out to Night in Chinatown to see the lion dances and the big festivities, we would usually have a nice "End of the Year" dinner at one of the restaurants there.   After I got married, we would always have a Chinese New Year dinner (or dim sum), with my wife's family.   But the biggest feast for Chinese New Year always comes for my family on the day after Chinese New Year, on neen cho yee (or the 2nd day of the year).   For my family this is probably the biggest feast of the year, rivaling Thanksgiving, and often surpassing it in the amount of food.

When my Po Po was alive, she used to cook the entire feast by herself, and it would take her several days.  Since she's passed on, my aunty has been the one cooking Chinese New Year dinner.   Unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, where each member of my family contributes one dish, Aunty usually cooks Chinese New Year dinner all by herself.  This is largely due to the fact that Chinese New Year is not a State or Federal holiday in Hawaii, so we don't get the day off to cook.   Aunty will take one day of vacation time to spend the day cooking, but it's always a lot of work for her.  However, the importance of the holiday, with its need for special foods, usually outweighs her busy schedule.  Not having the day off, also means that we usually have to rush over to her house after work that day, both to enjoy the huge feast she's made, and to pay respects to our ancestors.

Whether they're Buddhist, Taoist, or whatever, many Chinese families will have an altar in their homes for their ancestors.   It isn't so much a form or religion (you don't really worship your ancestors), as much as it is a form of rememberance and respect.   To be perfectly honest, it never really meant that much to me until my Po Po passed away.   After she was gone, and we put her picture up on the altar, suddenly the whole altar had new meaning for me.  Suddenly, standing before the altar didn't mean paying respect to people I had never known, but it meant communicating with my Po Po again, telling her how my life is going, asking her for help and advise, and of course wishing her Happy New Year. 

My Family's Altar at New Year's

On neen cho yee, my family would rush home to stand before the altar before sunset.  In the days preceeding, every type of new year goodie, tong goh, gao, jai, narcissus, all kinds of fruits, and everything else would be on the altar.  But on this day, all of the food my aunty would be presented before the ancestors, so they could share in our feast.   Regardless of the number of ancestors, there would always be 6 bowls of rice (5 half full and 1 full), and 6 pairs of chopsticks.   We would ring the bell 3 times, to let them know we're home and to invite them to come home and feast with us (although my sons have taken to ringing the bell many more than 3 times).   We would then light 3 sticks of Chinese incense, put our hands together and bow 3 sets of 3 times, and place the incense on the altar. 

After we had all said hi to Po Po, my uncle and I would take the paper money from the altar and go outside to burn it in a pot.   Unlike Western beliefs, Chinese believe that money is still required in the afterlife.   But instead of working and toiling for your cash, you are taken care of by your decendants.  So every New Year (as well as funerals, death anniversaries, and Ching Ming), we burn thin paper with gold & silver foil on it (sort of like origami paper), called gum ngun.   In actuality, the paper is supposed to folded to look like gold teals (the nugget of currancy in the very old days), but since we don't have the day off, we've been burning unfolded paper lately (hopefully Po Po won't mind too much).   Living in the modern times, we also have paper money that resembles Western bills to burn, but we usually save that for Ching Ming.   When Uncle and I have finished burning, we would pour 3 small cups of liquor into the pot, followed by 3 small cups of tea, to finish it all off.   After we've finished burning everything, its time to eat!

In the West, and even at most Chinese dinners, there is one type of soup to start off a meal.   But for this meal, Aunty always cooks 4 soups.  These soups are actually most important part of the meal.   Each soup has a highly symbolic meaning and we usually only ever get to eat them at Chinese New Year, so they are very special.  This is especially so, for the first soup, which also happens to be my favorite one, called fat choi tong.    Fat choi is a type of vegetable, a seaweed, that looks exactly like jet black hair (although slightly thicker than real hair), therefore it is called fat choi (which literally means "hair vegetable").   This is one vegetable that had Andrew Zimmern known about would surely have been showcased on Bizarre Foods, because it is kind of frightening looking to the uninitiated (it really looks like a big clump of hair floating in your broth).  But I really love the texture of this vegetable, which I can only describe as kinda similar to cooked alfalfa.  It has a very subtle flavor, but somehow it is still not overpowered by the chicken in the soup.  You will also find this vegetable in traditional jai, but there it just blends in with all of the other ingredients, whereas in this soup it is showcased as the star.   This vegetable is highly significant for New Year's as it's name, fat choi, is a homonym, which sounds just like the Chinese words for wealth and good fortune (as in Gung Hee Fat Choy). 

Fat Choi Tong (Fat Choi Soup)

The second soup was always my favorite when I was little.   It is a corn soup or sook mai tong.  It isn't too dissimilar to corn chowder or creamed corn, but without any of the cream taste.   I think because it is such a mild, sweet, and creamy (in texture but not taste) soup, kids really like it, because it has become my son's favorite as well.   This soup also represents wealth, as the corn color is supposed to be similar to gold.

Sook Mai Tong (Corn Soup)

The third soup is the most ordinary of all the 4 soups.   It is a bamboo shoot soup, or jook sun tong.   Whereas fat choi is eaten almost exclusively at New Year's time, my Po Po would actually cook this soup for me on a semi regular basis.   However, it is still signficant to have, because bamboo shoots are a big symbol of longevity in Chinese culture.  I don't know how my aunty does it, but the bamboo in this soup is so incredibly plump and juicy, and marries so well with the chicken stock. 

Jook Sun Tong (Bamboo Shoot Soup)

The fourth soup is the most well known of these soups, shark fin soup or yuu chee tong.   If you've never had shark's fin, it actually has very little taste.   It is more of a slippery, long rice type of texture (but firmer).  It mainly absorbs the flavor of the soup its in.    While this dish has been a significant part of Chinese culture as a symbol of prosperity since the Ming Dynasty, it has been the object of controversy recently by bleeding heart environmentalists who consider it cruel to cut the fins of a shark.   Personally, I don't think it's any more cruel than the slaughter of any animal for food.  I do however wish that they harvested more of the shark than just the fins, as any animal that gives its life for food deserves to be made full use of.  There is also concern over the decline in the shark population as a result of over harvesting.  That, on the other hand, is something I can appreciate, and as in all things moderation is the key.  My wish would be that they found a way to farm raise sharks (any species really) to satisfy this demand.   Over hunting almost wiped out the American bison, but these days you can enjoy a very tasty, farm raised, buffalo burger in many places (if you've never had one, you gotta head down to Kiawe Grill in Old Stadium Mall in Moiliili).   Sharks fin soup is a delicacy, as well as huge part of Chinese culture.  It deserves to be protected, so it can be enjoyed by future generations.

Yuu Chee Tong (Shark's Fin Soup)

There is actually a 5th soup that is missing from this set, the famed bird nest soup or yim wo tong.    Bird nest soup, is actually made from the saliva that cave swifts uses to build their nests.   People that harvest these nests have to climb to the top of some very dangerous caves to pry them from the ceiling (it's even more dangerous than opihi picking).   It sounds truly bizarre and frightening, but like the sharks fin, it really doesn't have that strong a taste.  It's very mild, mainly a crunchy jelly like texture (like cartilidge or certain types of fungus).  The really high quality stuff actually just dissolves completely into the broth.   I remember my Po Po making it when I was little for big parties when all of our aunties and uncles would come over.  This soup, even more famous and significant than the shark's fin soup, is not only supposed to symbolize good health for the new year, but is supposed to have incredible nutritional benefits that will alleviate all kinds of health problems.  The problem with it, is that it is ridiculously expensive.   Even moreso than the shark's fin.   Bird's nests go for about $200 a pound for the cheap end stuff.   So, while it is highly significant, we just can't afford to have it every year.

Following the soups, Aunty usually cooks a number of different dishes.    In years past, she has slow braised whole chickens in her pressure cooker (something I used to refer to as "bathtub chicken" because of the shape of her pressure cooker).  This year she opted for some pork chops.   They look basic, but they were cooked just perfectly tender and juicy.   She adorned them with carrot medallions (also representative of gold coins for the shape and color).

Pork Chops

Aunty always cooks a lot of a big batch of shrimp, this year they were garlic shrimp.   Shrimp always seem necessary for festive Chinese dinners.  In fact, in many Chinese families, although they cook a turkey for Thanksgiving, it is the shirmp that is the highlight of the meal.   I remember in grad school, I had a Korean friend who just sat there the whole Thanksgiving dinner eating nothing but the shirmp and grunting every so often about how good it was.   Many Westerners aren't as fond of shrimp, because they're lazy to peel the shells off, but that's what locks in all the flavor.

Shrimp

For a vegetable course, Aunty usually creates something interesting using all of the leftover ingredients that go into jai.   What never ceases to amaze me, is how you can take these same ingredients, put them together in different ways, and have them taste totally different.   In this case, it is the sugar snap peas she threw in that just dominated the flavor of the dish.   The vegetables were so incredibly sweet, not in a sugary sense, but in that fresh, green, from the garden taste.  

Mixed Vegetables

My mom also decided to contribute a dish this year.   After visiting Hsu Yun Temple, and sampling their true monk's food, she was inspired to try recreating their dish with her own leftover jai ingredients.   Then she went on a tangent throwing in American bacon and some Vietnamese sausage (gio).  However, unlike her supreme jai, somehow these ingredients didn't mesh very well.  On top of that, one of the bean curds she used had a very funny canned taste, which kind of spoiled the whole dish for me.  I would've just preferred some more of her incredibly awesome jai.

Mom's Concoction

This year, Aunty also tried to make something really special.   It was a dish of some of the most amazingly plump and juicy black shiitake mushrooms (or doong gu) that I've ever tasted, along with some very tender and sweet abalone.   Abalone is also not cheap, though not as bad as the shark's fin or the bird's nest, coming in at around $40 a pound.   I don't usually like abalone, because many people do it wrong and it's really tough, or it has a weird canned taste.   But these were so remarkably tender and fresh tasting.   Abalone is another significant dish, because the Chinese word for abalone, bao yuu, is another homonym, sounding just like the words for "guaranteed abundance", something we definitely need in this economy.

Abalone & Black Mushrooms

To wrap everything up, you definitely need to have a fish.  Fish or yuu, like the abalone, are a symbol of abundance and prosperity.  It is as important to the Chinese at Chinese New Year, as to the Japanese during regular New Year's.   Of course, you have to stick with the classic Chinese steamed preparation with sesame oil & shoyu sauce, garnished with green onion and ginger.   Howevever, this time Aunty went with a pair of mullet, which I don't think were quite as tasty as the uhu (parrotfish), she cooked at regular New Year.

Braised Mullet

There is one dish that is very conspicuously missing from all of this.    My Po Po used to make the best joong at New Year's time.   Good joong is all in the wrapping, and she used to pack it tighter than anyone I've ever seen in my life.   She used to make wrapping it look so easy, but my mom and my aunty were never able to wrap it nearly as well as she did.  Just like my mom gives jai out to all her friends and family at New Year, my Po Po used to be famous for the joong she gave away at New Year's time.   Even if I went to the market to buy some joong to add to the meal, it would never be as good as my Po Po's was.   It is something that I miss every year since she's been gone.

Chinese New Year's Dinner 2010

In actuality, like the 12 days of Christmas, Chinese New Year is supposed to last 15 days.   It begins with New Year's Day and ends with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day, and every day in between is supposed to be celebrated with different foods (the 3rd day is supposed to be feast of fruits), but like Christmas in our modern world, it is just too difficult to celebrate more than one day.   But with everything Aunty cooks, we have leftovers for days anyway, and more importantly we keep our Chinese traditions alive.   It is one of my favorite holidays and I think my Po Po is happy to see her great grandsons ringing the bell for her and starting to enjoy the same foods she used to cook.

Gung Hee Fat Choy - Part II: A Day of Harmony

Of all of the major holidays, Chinese New Year is probably the busiest of all for me.   There are so many traditions to observe, and things to prep for that, Christmas shopping seems like a breeze in comparison.  Despite Valentine's Day, President's Day, and Mardi Gras all being on the same 3 day weekend this year, greeting the new year majorly took precedence over all of them.

Of course preparation for Chinese New Year begins way before New Year's itself, and we each have our designated roles.   My wife is a veteran narcissus bulb carver, with her own set of specialized narcissus carving tools.  She's never done anything really fancy, like getting it to grow into the shape of a duck or a teapot, but her flowers always come beautifully curly and bloom evenly and brightly by the new year.  As for myself, as a graduate of Hoo Cho Chinese School in my youth, I'm the family's resident calligrapher.  So a week before New Year's I get started writing a dui leen, or the red paper blessings.  You will find these 4 word couplets (like the words Gung Hee Fat Choy) hanging in a pair or two pairs in just about every Chinese home and business on the island.  They express all the good wishes that a family or business would want to receive for the coming year, such as prosperity and wealth, good health, longevity, posterity and many good children, good luck, and a plethora of other wishes.   The words Gung Hee Fat Choy themselves, such a common greeting in the islands at this time, don't actually mean "Happy New Year" (that's more directly translated as "Sun Neen Fai Lock"), but rather are a wish for prosperity, wealth, and happiness.  It always amused me to think that the Vulcans might've been Chinese, because the Vulcan salute, "Live Long and Prosper", is so easily translatable into one of these couplets ("Cheong Fook Cheong Sau").  While these couplets usually stay up all year long, every new year, fresh ones should be put up and the old ones burned (to give thanks for having recieved the blessings over the last year).   So I usually spend the week leading up to new years, writing like mad for all my family's houses and businesses.

4 Couplets in Chinese Calligraphy (left to right):

May 1 investment yields 10,000 returns

May your house fill with gold and jade

May you be as strong as a dragon and healthy as a horse

May the flowers be beautiful and the moon be round (ie. May all be right with the world)

Other things that must be done before the new year include things like:

• Getting your haircut (along with cutting your fingernails and shaving).  Barbershops in Hawaii enjoy a small rush before Chinese New Year, as my own stylist noted as she was cutting my hair. 
• Paying off all debts.   Aside of major things like mortgages, we always try to have all debts paid off by New Years.
• Cleaning the house.    This one is the biggie.  My wife complains that I turn into an obsessive fanatical cleaning maniac just before new years (although recently she's complained that I'm not that way the rest of the year).  But for me, it is sort of spring cleaning on speed.  Of particular importance is sweeping the floor and cleaning the kitchen.  My desk is usually such a mess the rest of the year I can't find anything, but on New Year's day, it will be spotless.   Not mention scrubbing the bathrooms, vacuuming the floor, dusting all the surfaces, etc.   I've recently discovered how much more difficult this task is with children, who have toys covering every inch of your house, and no where to really put them "away".  When I'm done, I'm completely exhausted, but I feel primed and ready to seize the new year.   There was one year that I spent Chinese New Year working in Guam, and I didn't get a chance to clean the house at all.   That year, I felt completely hapless, like walking into a final exam when you skipped out of every class and didn't bother to crack open the book at all.  Having a clean house is just essential.

On the night before the New Year (ie. Chinese New Year's Eve), we always take a bath with the leaves of the boh look tree, freshly cut from our garden.   The boh look (or pomelo fruit) is usually associated with Mid-Autumn Festival, but it also symbolizes purity, so taking a bath with the leaves of this tree floating in the water is meant to cleanse away the tribulations of the past year.  Besides, it is such a relaxing and surreal feeling to have these slightly fragrant green leaves floating around you.   After the bath, my mom would give us a small li see (those lucky red envelopes), to put at the foot of our beds, along with a tangerine to sleep with.   The tangerine, is also symbolic, because the sound of the word for tangerine "gut", is a homonym which sounds like the word for prosperity.  So a tangerine or orange at the foot of the bed, along with some li see beneath it, is symbolic of a prosperous new year.   The stack looks kind of similar to the kagami mochi and orange stack that the Japanese display at regular New Year's Day.   The only tricky part is being careful not to kick the tangerine from your bed while you sleep (it's much easier to sleep with a tooth beneath your pillow).

My Son Sleeping with Li See and a Tangerine

On Christmas morning, children race out of bed to tear into their presents beneath the tree.  On Chinese New Year morning it's sort of the opposite.  The first thing children do is very formally wish their parents a happy new year, and to have good health and longevity ("Sun Neen Fai Lock.   Sun Tai Ging Hong.").  Children always go first, to give respect to their elders.   Parents will then tell the kids all the good things they hope the kids will accomplish, learn, and experience this year.   Along with those wishes comes another li see (this time with a little more money in it), as a gift for good luck and good fortune.   Li See is actually given from any older married person, to any younger unmarried person.   So when I was in grad school, all the Chinese students teased our older, married, classmate (who was only a few years older), asking for li see at Chinese New Year.  But getting a li see is always about the good fortune being passed on, not about the money, and about the respect for the one giving it.

Chinese New Year's Day has it's own set of rules to follow:

• Don't wash your hair.   This will wash out all the good luck you've received at the coming of the new year.  Besides, you should've had your hair cut already in your holiday preparations.
• Don't sweep the ground.  This will also sweep out all of the good fortune you've received.  Besides that, everything should already be spotless with all the cleaning you've been doing this past week.
• Don't cut anything with a knife.   You don't want to be cutting the relationships between you and your loved ones.
• In fact, you really shouldn't be cooking or cleaning at all on New Year's Day.  All of that should be finished before New Year's. 
• You should wear new clothes.  Whenever my mom gives me any clothes for Christmas, I always save one set to wear on Chinese New Year, not so far away.   Preferably you should be wearing red, as that's the color of happiness (just like the green you'd wear on St. Patrick's Day, or the orange and black you wear at Halloween). 
• Hopefully the narcissus will bloom on New Year's Day, as it will bring in extra prosperity that year.
• Shopkeepers must make a sale to the first customer in their store.  So this is actually a great time to try barganing with them, because they won't let you walk away.
• Anything you do that day, you'll be doing for the rest of the year, so you generally want to be doing something fun or something productive.
• Above all, don't argue with your family that day.   You don't want to strain your family relationships on that day, and you certainly don't want to be arguing with them all year long.   It's kind of like not pouting or Santa won't bring you gifts, but with a lot more dire consequences.  

It's funny, there are so many ways to jeopardize the good fortune you receive on New Year's.  Basically, it's supposed to be just a nice peaceful, harmonious day, where you avoid any kind of conflict.    These are really old Cantonese superstitions, and people from other parts of China may or may not observe them.   In fact, there is variance from family to family, but this is what my own Goong Goong and Po Po observed. 

Other Chinese families may have a big Chinese dinner, but because my mom's family was Buddhist, New Year's Day was always a strictly vegetarian day for us.  This goes along with the spirit of the day being free from conflicts or harm to others.  When I was little, this never bothered me so much, as what I wound up eating was peanut butter over hot rice (something my Po Po used to love).  To this day, I love eating peanut butter and rice, as it reminds me of my childhood and my time with her.   These days, I am famously not fond of vegetarianism, as promoted by granola crunching crowd, but this is an entirely different story.  Besides not wanting to rock my karmac balance, the vegetarian food that we get to eat on New Year's Day, is my mom's awesome jai.

My Mom's Jai

Good jai may be the single most complex dish in the entire Chinese culinary repetoire.  However, I've never found any restaurant that serves the kind of jai that my mom makes.  Restaurant jai is relatively simple in flavors and ingredients.  There is really no way that they could afford to serve homemade style jai, which on average has around 30 different ingredients.   Not only are there many, many ingredients, but many of them are exotic vegetables that you've hardly ever heard of, and probably only ever eat at new year's time.  There are the more common like dong gu (or shiitake mushrooms) which are incredibly plump and meaty, lotus root (or hasu), which is just perfectly crunchy, won bok (napa cabbage), and baby corns.  There are also many more exotic vegetables, like fat choy (which is a seaweed that looks exactly like strands of black hair), mook yee (or wood ear fungus, which looks like a big floppy elephant's ear), and gum jun (or golden lily buds).   There are so many forms of bean curds, each with a totally different texture, like fried tofu or wu jook (the flat wrinkled sheets of bean curd you usually see as a bed below your dim sum).  There are also many other ingredients, with only Chinese names, that I'm really unfamiliar with.   And everything is held together with a base flavor of bat gock (star anise) and different kinds of tofu mui (fermented bean paste), both of which give the dish a really old Chinese flavor.

My Mom's Army Pot of Jai

My mom actually originally learned how to make jai from the famous local author/chef June Tong (who wrote PoPo's Kitchen), who is a good family friend.  But over the years, my mom has naturally modified the recipe, and it has evolved into something uniquely hers.   These days, she cooks an actual army pot worth of jai, to give away to friends and family just before New Year's.   What really amazes me about her jai, is how there are so many different flavors and textures, and yet everything works together so harmoniously.  There are crunchy things, there are soft things, there are jelly like things, there are meaty things, and yet they don't real clash with each other.   That's really difficult to do, with less than a dozen ingredients, much less with 3 times that many. But it all works, and it's all incredibly delicious.  Although, I do like picking through my jai to try to taste each thing individually sometimes.  My favorite is the mook yee (or wood ear), with its big floppy form yet crunchy texture.

My Best Friend's Aunty's Jai

Every Chinese family has their own recipe for jai.   With that many ingredients, every family's jai tastes very different.  My best friend's aunty also always gives me some every year, and I always adore her jai.   She uses different ingredients from my mom.  Many of which are a little more recognizable like snow peas, carrot medallions (which are meant to look like gold coins), 3 or 4 different types of mushrooms, and water chestnuts.   Even the base flavoring is different, which almost reminds me of a peanut buttery taste.   I would tend to go back and forth, year to year, deciding which jai I liked better for that year.  Both are equally complex, and equally delicious.  If there were one big difference, I would say that my mom's has a much older Cantonese flavor, the flavors that remind me of my Po Po and really old style cooking, whereas my best friend's aunty's is a much more modern classic Hong Kong taste.

Many Chinese families, my best friend's included, will often put hou see (or dried oyster) in their jai for flavoring.   This seems always seems appropriate for New Year's, as hou see is another homonym, which sounds like the words for "good news" (something you naturally want in the New Year).   Of course, this however makes the jai, no longer vegetarian.  True monks would never eat oysters (or any meat), in their jai.  If you want to taste the truest jai, then you really need to go to a Buddhist temple and try what the monks themselves eat.   Not many people know about it, but Hsu Yun Temple, tucked away in Nuuanu, always serves jai to anyone that visits the temple for free on Chinese New Year's.  It's on a first come first serve basis and they usually run out way before noon.  But their jai is absolutely fantastic, as you would expect it to be since this the kind of food the monks actually eat, and they have naturally perfected their vegetarianism over thousands of years.  Aside of that, Hsu Yun Temple is one of the biggest, most beautiful, most secluded temples in Hawaii, rivaling Byodo-Inn, and it is where my mom's parents (my Po Po and Goong Goong) have their name placards.   So my family visits the temple every New Year to visit them, and to try the monks' awesome jai.

I have spoken to many friends from mainland China, who are really surprised that we adhere to all of these traditions for Chinese New Year.   In China's modern society, they often don't even practice many of these things anymore.  However, living in Hawaii, our Chinese community has always tried to preserve and keep the traditions alive, sometimes much moreso than the Chinese in China.  For me, it makes Chinese New Year one of the most special days of the year.

Gung Hee Fat Choy - Part I: Nights in Chinatown

Being Chinese, Chinese New Year is a really big holiday for my family.   It's actually on par with Christmas in scope and importance.   Just as the Christmas season really kicks into gear after Thanksgiving, with a solid month of music, sales and parties prior to Christmas Day, Chinese New Year starts getting underway shortly after regular New Year's Day.  The Chinese community in Hawaii swells with pride, sharing its food and culture with all of our neighbors.

Rows of Narcissus Bulbs in the Sun

The first thing that many Chinese families do after Christmas is head to Chinatown to buy narcissus (or sui seen fa) bulbs.  While in the Western world, the narcissus is synonymous with vanity as derived from Greek mythology, in Chinese mythlology the narcissus flower (which resembles a little cup of gold) was said to bring wealth and prosperity to those who found it.  So it is heavily cultivated at Chinese New Year's time, for its delicate, sweet fragrance, beauty, and as a symbol of wealth for the coming year.   Narcissus bulbs (which are similar to onions) can even be carved to grow into elaborate and intricate shapes, something which has evolved into a classic Chinese art form.   It takes roughly a month to grow from bulb to blossom, and seeing the rows of little sprouting bulbs in water filled bowls bathing in the sunlight on my Po Po's steps always used to put me into the mood for Chinese New Years (the same way that Christmas music starts putting you in the Christmas spirit).  If the narcissus flowers would bloom on Chinese New Year's day, it would be extra lucky, and a sure sign of coming wealth in the new year.

My Baby Boy's First Whiff of Narcissus

The positive connotation of the narcissus flower (which is completely opposite of the Western connotation) also lends its name to the biggest Chinese celebration in Hawaii, the Narcissus Festival.   It was originally conceived following World War II as a way to re-invigorate the economy the post-war economy by showcasing and celebrating the Chinese culture.  The selection of the new Narcissus Queen, always seems like the big kickoff to the Chinese New Year celebration in Hawaii.  While other big Chinese communities around the world may have a Miss Chinatown pageant (as do we), the Narcissus pageant is very different from any other beauty pageant.  All of the contestants in the pageant receive very rigorous training, with over a dozen different classes in different aspects of Chinese culture and history.  Not only does the queen and court represent the Chinese community in many official functions around town throughout the year, but she also spends 3 weeks in China, meeting with governors and other heads of state as a cultural ambassador.   Feminists may scorn the beauty pageants on the mainland, which they think objectifies women, but the Narcissus contestants are always very highly educated, dynamic, strong willed women who are interested in reconnecting with their Chinese heritage and representing the Chinese community in Hawaii.   It is the very feminist ideal, and no wonder that many of these women become leaders in their respective fields and the community.

The festivities begin with the pageant itself, where you won't find them dressed in swimsuits, but a classy and elegant Chinese cheong sams (which can cost around $1,000 a piece when adorned with Austrian crystals).  Then in a week or two, the Coronation Ball, the most formal event of the year (the only time of the year we'd wear tuxedos instead of aloha shirts), where the newly crowned queen dances her first dance with the Governor of Hawaii or the Mayor of Honolulu.   Then in the next couple of weeks, the queen and court  appear all over Chinatown as the streets are all coned off and turned into a huge party.

I love going to Chinatown on the weekend nights leading up to Chinese New Year.  Sure, it's nearly impossible to find parking anywhere near Chinatown, and sure it's literally wall to wall people (something akin to Time's Square in New York on New Year's Eve), but being there always makes me feel like part of something bigger, like I'm connected to all of these people celebrating their heritage.   It always reminds me of those old movies, where the hero gets chased into Chinatown, and it just happens to be Chinese New Year, so the hero can slip away into the sea of people or hide under the dragon dancers, and is able to escape the villan (or vice versa).   With the amount of people in Chinatown on these nights, it's actually quite believable for Hollywood. 

My Son Feeding the Lions

Of course, visiting Chinatown at New Year's means lion dances.   It's nearly impossible to turn a corner without running into a lion dance.  They're more plentiful than Starbucks.   Every shop owner needs to have a lion dance come to bring good luck and prosperity for the new year.   As a Cantonese person, I'm naturally far more partial to the colorful, kinda scary looking, Southern lions, rather than the Northern lions which look like big shaggy yellow dogs balancing on balls (although I do love that segment in Big Bird in China, where Barkley gets to prance around with 2 Northern lions).   I also like the far more acrobatic and difficult lion dance to the long spectacle of the dragon dance (although dragons dances are becoming more common here than they were when I was a kid).  In addition to bringing prosperity to a shop keeper, luck and prosperity for the coming year may be bestowed upon an individual if he feeds the lion (usually a dollar).  So finding and feeding the lions is a must every year.

Tong Goh on Display at Sing Cheong Yuan

My favorite part about Chinese New Year though, is of course the many foods that are associated with New Years.  As you wander through Chinatown in the weekends leading up to New Years, there are certain foods that are simply must haves, both in terms of tradition and good fortune.   Missing them would be like Thanksgiving without turkey or Christmas without egg nog.  The first big stop just has to be Sing Cheong Yuan for some tong goh (or dried candied fruits).   At Moon Festival time, Sing Cheong Yuan is the king of mooncakes, but at Chinese New Years, their display cases are filled with every type of tong goh imagineable.   While in Hawaii, rock salt plums and cherries are everyday snacks, the slightly sugared, dried fruits in tong goh are usually only eaten at New Years.  Our tong goh is also different from the ones found in other Chinese communities, as it showcases many of our local tropical fruits.   In any given box, you'll find, pineapple, coconut, mango, and papaya, along with carrot, lotus seed, lotus root (hasu), kumquat, apple, pear, ginger, and many others.  Each fruit symbolizes something different for the new year, including, wealth and prosperity, good health and longevity, good luck, fertility, familiy unity, and overall happiness.   My favorite has always been the pineapple, as it's deliciously sweet (lacking the tartness of fresh pineapple), it symbolizes wealth (resembling a giant golden Chinese coin with the whole in the middle), and it's the favorite of Professor Horace Slughorn (Harry Potter's last potions master).

Assorted Tong Goh from Sing Cheong Yuan

As you wander up Maunakea Street, and into the Chinese Cultural Plaza, perhaps the most popular snack item that everyone's crazy for at New Year's time, is jin dui.  Similar to Japanese an dango, it's basically mochi, filled with black sugar, deep fried and rolled in sesame seeds.   I always love watching the various Chinese clubs and civic organizations gather all their members to roll, fry, and sell jin dui for fundraising.  They use the biggest woks I've ever seen in my life to fry up huge batches of jin dui, which sell out in no time to the massive crowd.  Just like buying malasadas at Punahou Carnival, everyone wants jin dui at Chinese New Year, because you can never get it nearly as fresh and hot any other time of the year.  Coming straight from the wok right before your eyes, the jin dui is crispy, chewy, sweet, and mouthwatering.  Of course, you absolutely must eat it there, because not only is the noisy crowded streets of Chinatown the essential atmosphere for consuming these yummy morsels, but they will become soggy and cold in half an hour.  So having them fresh and hot is absolutely essential to enjoying them.   Like many great foods, its the contrast in textures that makes jin dui so appealing.   Normally mochi is so soft and sticky, but when you deep fry it the outside is wonderfully crispy and contrasts the gooey inside.  It's no wonder that everyone has to have one right out of the giant wok.

Big Box of Jin Dui

While jin dui is the dominant street food however, the most important food of all at New Year's is another form of mochi, gao.   Despite being a Cantonese dish, for some reason everyone in Hawaii knows it by the Mandarin pronounciation of "gao", rather than the true Cantonese pronounciation, "gou" (or rather neen gou, meaning yearly pudding).  This is somewhat ironic, because in Northern China, the form of gao they have is white and salty, rather than brown and sweet, and virtually unrecognizable to us as gao.  But in Hawaii, we're all familiar with the soft, sticky brown sugar mochi we call gao.     Like all the other New Year's dishes, gao is highly symbolic of New Year's wishes.   The stickiness of the gao, is supposed to bind and hold the family together during the new year.   The little sesame seeds on top are meant to represent having many little children.   The single red date, placed like a cherry on top, symbolizes prosperity and happiness.   Even its name, gou is homonymn for the word for "higher", so eating it is supposed to raise yourself up in the coming year.  Having gao is as essential to Chinese New Year, as kagami mochi (the stack of round white mochi topped with an orange) is for the Japanese at regular New Year.

Rows of Gao

Of course no one makes gao the way that my Po Po used to make it.    For one thing, she would make it Hawaiian style, lining the pan with ti leaves (the same way that lau lau is wrapped in ti leaves).   But what made hers the best was the texture.  Many gao you find on the market are just too sticky and gooey.  Some are the opposite, and when it is too firm it has a chalky, stale taste, like sinking your teeth into hard wax.   My Po Po's gao was the perfect texture.  Sticky yet firm enough to hold its shape when cut.  It was sweet, but not overpoweringly so, as Chinese deserts are never as sweet as Western ones.  No other gao I've ever tasted has ever been as good.   Even leftover old gao can be made appetizing once more, by dipping it in egg and frying it as the Hong Kongese do.   Frying piece of old gao makes the center soft again, and the outside gets crispy, not unlike a good jin dui.   It's something you just can't get enough of when done right.

Hawaiian Style Gao with Ti Leaf Lining

Every year, despite the crowds, we just have to make the trek into Chinatown to join the festivity.  You never feel more happy and proud to be Chinese.

A Little Touch of Heart

When I was in high school, one of my best friends found an old picture of himself in a swimsuit that made him completely disgusted with himself (which he nicknamed "the whale").   He ultimately took the drastic action of eliminating virtually all fat from his diet.  He began subsisting almost entirely on bread, rice, and more than anything else cereal.   He took his diet and athletics extremely seriously, and he transformed into one of the most lean and toned individuals I've ever seen. 

Because of him, we always had to keep Costco sized boxes of cereal at our house.   Whenever he would come over (which was pretty frequently), cereal would be the only thing that we could enjoy together.  Although I'm a huge fan of Frosted Flakes, everything would have to be the fat and sugar free cereals (meaning no nuts or dried fruits either).  You'd be surprised at the cereals you THINK are healthy, but actually have a lot of sugar or fat in them, like Cracklin Oat Bran.  But there is still a surprising variety in this criteria; Cornflakes, Cheerios, Chex, Special K, Wheaties, Mini Wheats, Kix, and Grape Nuts to name a few.   Out of all of them, I never really liked Grape Nuts.  Although they withstood milk the best, they were just hard little pebbles that tasted way too earthy for my taste.  But I found that I really liked mixing Grape Nuts with Prego spaghetti sauce.  Don't ask me how that got started, but something about adding a little savoriness to the mix just made them a lot tastier.

Although we kept huge boxes of cereal at our house for our frequent guest, I've never really liked having cereal for breakfast.  To me, it was always a late night snack with my friend.  Something about having cereal with cold milk in the morning upsets my tummy.   Breakfast to me, has to be a warm and yummy thing.  Actually, cold cereals themselves are only a century old phenomenon.  It wasn't until the Kellog brothers invented Corn Flakes and granola, that such a product even existed and became popular.   Prior to their innovation, everyone ate oatmeal or porridge.   In the old world, porridge or gruel was made with oats, barley, or wheat.   Most people think of porridge as a European peasant food, but in actuality, all of the Asian countries also had an equivalent.   But there the porridge is made with rice.   Here in Hawaii, we know this dish for it's Chinese name, jook.

Sau Yuk Pei Dan Jook at Royal Garden

If you go to Hong Kong, or pretty much any other country on that side of the world, jook is the defacto breakfast item.  But here in Hawaii, jook has never really had the same connotation.  I was pretty surprised to see jook being eaten for breakfast everywhere I went in China.  Here, jook is most frequently associated with 2 other things.   It is the most popular way of dealing with Thanksgiving leftovers (something I'm very much looking forward to next week).  And it is the end all cure for the common cold, similar to the way that chicken soup is perceived on the mainland.   I remember whenever I got sick when I was younger, my Po Po would make me the best jook in the world.   After she passed away, and my mom had no time to make it for me, they would always stop at Kwok's Chop Suey on Waialae and pick up a container for me.   Unfortunately, when Hung Won took over from Kwok's, they no longer maintained a supply of jook on the menu.  But these days whenever I get sick, my wife will stop off at Mini Garden on the way home and pick up a bowl for me.   It really does make you feel better when you're sick and miserable.

Besides "Thanksgiving turkey" jook and "chicken soup for the local boy" jook, you can find nice steaming bowls of jook at dim sum.    Dim sum in Hawaii also has different connotations from dim sum in Hong Kong.   Originally created as a snack food for travellers visiting roadside inns, "dim sum" translates to a little touch of heart (although there is some debate as to whether it is touch as a verb meaning "to touch", or touch as a noun meaning "just a touch").  In the Orient is eaten all day long, but frequently enjoyed as "siu yeh" or a midnight snack.   Dim sum restaurants in Hong Kong serve dim sum 24 hours a day, and frequently at 1AM you can find a dim sum restaurant packed with people.   Here in Hawaii, dim sum is primarily a brunch occasion.  For a Chinese family, dim sum is the traditional Sunday brunch, and that is when you'll find most the most people at Chinese restaurants.

My favorite dim sum restaurant when I was very little was the Oceania floating restaurant.   It was a gorgeous Chinese restaurant built on a boat and docked at the harbor near the Falls of Clyde.  As I recall, the ship was built as a sister ship (or a clone of) the famous Jumbo Floating Restaurant in Hong Kong.   Unfortunately, it didn't do well, and it's bankruptcy financially devastated and marred the reputation of the late great Sen. Hiram Fong.  I was very little at the time, but distinctly remember how cool it was to be eating nai dan bao and grass jelly rolls on such a gorgeous boat.   As I was growing up, I would always favor Sea Fortune (whose chef moved on to build Happy Days), and of course the always crowded Legend Seafood Restaurant in the Chinese Cultural Plaza (probably the king of all dim sum places in Honolulu).   But these days, I also look for a little bit of ambiance, someplace a little nicer to take visitors and clients alike.   Although it isn't as cheap as eating dim sum in Chinatown, a little bit of elegance, and very high quality food, make the difference worth it.    For this extra touch, I like visiting Royal Garden in the Ala Moana Hotel.  

Baked Char Siu Bao at Royal Garden

Just walking in to Royal Garden, you're greeted with a beautiful display case of some of the more exotic dried Chinese delicacies.  They've got enormous dried doong gu (black mushrooms).   They've got some really expensive dried birds nests.   They've got dried abalone the size of softball, and dried scallops the size of golf balls.  Most impressively though, they've got one of the largest pair of shark fins that I've ever seen, that look to be taller than my baby boy.  Around Moon Festival time, they also bake an enormous mooncake which is the size of about 200 regular mooncakes and takes up an entire table.

Sau Yuk Pei Dan Jook with Yau Char Gwai at Royal Garden

When it comes to jook, Royal Garden has some of the best in town.  It's not as thick as my Po Po's was.  It's a little thinner, but it's got a nice smooth consistency.   There are some places where the jook is way too watery and the rice kernels still too distinct, so it's more like a rice soup than a jook.  Royal Garden is also one of the few places in town that serve it with the crispy fried dough (called yau char gwai).  For the Chinese in Hawaii, being originally farmers, jook was a working man's breakfast or lunch.  They really didn't have the little extras that Hong Kong style dim sum brought on, like the crispy fried dough.  Although not having it growing up, I really like dipping the cruncy little things in my jook.   It's similar to dipping saltine crackers in your soup, having the crunchiness play off of the flavorful soup trying to make it soggy.   It's a nice contrast of textures.   My favorite jook at Royal Garden has to be sau yuk pei dan jook (or pork with preserved egg).   The thousand year old egg (which is actually only several months old, preserved in clay and ash), has such a strong, salty flavor.  I once made the mistake of entering a pei dan eating contest, where I had to devour 2 straight whole pei dan, and it was quite overwhelming.   It tasted like putting pure salt and ash in my mouth, and I wound up gagging.   But in the jook, the flavor mellows and blends perfectly well with the rice.  People from the mainland may find it disturbing to eat a jet black egg, but to me the dark sheen of the egg "blacks" and the marbled greenish tinge of the yolks is just a beauty to behold, like black onyx agates.

Jellyfish Salad at Royal Garden

Besides jook, Royal Garden has a huge variety of dim sum.  But besides the regular dishes like char siu bao, lo bak gou, and noh mai gai, they've got some of the more elegant dishes.   They have nice cold appetizers like their jellyfish salad.   Jellyfish actually a little crunchier than you'd expect it to be.  Kind of like daikon or cucumber in it's crunch.  But it's almost tasteless.  Instead it imbibes the flavors of whatever you dip it in, in this case a slightly spicy sesame oil.  It's such a beautiful light taste, just the thing for whetting your appetite.

Yuu Jyuu at Royal Garden

They also make an amazingly killer roast pork.   But this is NOT siu yuk as we're normally accustomed to here.   This is yuu jyuu, or suckling pig.  Because it's such a young pig, it doesn't have layers of fat that you get with siu yuk.  However, also because it's such a young pig, the meat is so amazingly tender, you don't need the fat to moisten it.   Instead you're left with an extremely crunchy (but not oily) skin, and some tender lean meat, with a very delicate flavorful pork taste. 

Roast Duck at Royal Garden

Probably my favorite thing at Royal Garden though is their roast duck (or siu ngap).   Their duck may possibly be the best roast duck in town.   It's first of all quite lean, yet still tender.   It's also quite meaty, not just all bones.  The skin is crisp, not oily, and intensely flavorful.   But what it really has is an incredible duck flavor, which is kind of hard to describe in English.   In Chinese, we say a flavor like this is very "herng" or fragrant (this is also the first word in Hong Kong or herng gong meaning "fragrant harbor"), as if the smokey flavors of the duck transcends your sense of taste and intoxicates your sense of aroma as well.   This duck is certainly the most fragrant in town.  To top it all off, it's served on a bed of candied azuki beans, that just sit there and absorb all of the fantastic duck juices and flavors.   So you've got this amazing combination of candy sweet azuki bean flavor mixed with the smokey duck flavor.  My son will sit there and just pop them in his mouth, one by one, with his little chopsticks and be perfectly content.

Whether it is just a simple bowl of jook, or a full dim sum brunch, having a Chinese breakfast is such a nice change of pace from bacon and eggs.  A little touch of heart that fills you up for the rest of the day.

Ma-na-pua!! Pe-pe-iao!!

On the mainland, every kid remembers the ice cream truck.   The trucks would roam around the neighborhood, broadcasting their familiar whimsical tune and kids would flock to the trucks to pick up a frozen treat.   Well, here in the islands, we had something similar, but with a little more substantial payoff.   It was the manapua man.    My dad would tell us how, in the old days, the manapua man would come walking down the street, carrying two giant steamers over his shoulder (with a bamboo pole in between), chanting his familiar sing-song chant of "Ma-na-pua!!  Pe-pe-iao!!"   You should really hear my dad do the cry, I could totally imagine a bunch of local kids running up to this old Chinese man to buy some manapua.

Sometimes what my dad tells me is so whimsical, I can't help but wonder if it's true or not.   For instance, he told me that he figured out what manapua actually meant.    He said that "mana" means power or energy, so he figured that manpua meant "power bread".  I almost spit my drink when I heard that one.   I replied, that by that logic, "pua" means flower, so manapua really means "flower power"!   I'm not really sure if he was kidding or not.  But my Po Po collaborated his stories about the manapua man, so I knew they must be true at least.   In actuality manapua is a contraction.   The original Hawaiian name for it was mea'ono pua'a.   That makes more sense right?   Some "delicious pork pastry"?    Pepeiao of course meant "ear", which is what the Hawaiians originally called the ear shaped dumpling, fun goh.    For that matter, Hawaiians used to call siu mai, okole (something my Po Po used to do too).   But I guess calling something an okole wasn't very appetizing and it kinda fell out of fashion.  

Over the years, as cars became more numerous and neighborhoods became more developed, the manapua man stopped walking the neighborhoods and people actually had to go to his shop to pick up some manapua, pepeiao, or okole.   But which shop would it be?    Well, in Hawaii, there is one shop single shop that pretty much clearly defined our style of manapua.   That shop would have to be Char Hung Sut, on Pauahi St. on the Mauka most edge of Chinatown.   Char Hung Sut, is such a non-descript little hole in the wall, that unless you're looking for it, you'd easily pass it by.    They've got almost nothing of signage, nothing at all to market themselves.  No neon lights.  Window displays.  Nothing.  There is just a door in the middle of a brick wall.   And yet.... everyone knows where it is.  

Char Hung Sut, is like the granddaddy of our local style of manapua.    Every single manapua shop in town, has tried to emulate their contribution to our culinary heritage.   If you go to dim sum at a Chinese restaurant, and order char siu bao, you'll notice that it is much smaller, with the seam at the top, and the bread is a lot lighter.   Char Hung Sut's manapua is more than twice the size of a regular char siu bao, and has that nice seamless bun look that we're all accustomed to.  

Manapua from Char Hung Sut

Is our style of manapua really that different from anyone else's?   Let's put it this way, last year we hosted some 5-star chefs from China.  They were from Beijing and Shanghai as I recall, and when they tasted our dim sum, they were confounded as to what was wrong with it.   They looked at our manapua and said, why is it so big, with so much bread?   They looked at our fun goh, and ha gao, and asked me, why is the pi (or wrapper) so thick??   Well... I had to explain to them (as my dad once explained to me) that the Chinese in Hawaii were all decended from Cantonese farmers who came to work in the sugar cane platations.   As they were farmers, they were a) poor, and b) needed something substantial that would keep them going as they worked the sugar cane fields.   So the style developed by the manapua man, and Char Hung Sut, was a bigger bao with thicker breading.   It was more cost effective, for the poor farmer, and it was much more filling.   Nowdays, we lead such a sedentary lifestyle, and we look for cuisine that allows us to "taste more" while "filling us up less", as was the case with the 5-star chefs.   But this is a modern luxury that people did not have in the old days.   People were happy that they could pay a dime, and get something much more substantial and filling.   Thus our manapua was made to fit the bill.

Char Hung Sut has a very special place in my heart.   When I was a little kid, or even now for that matter, char siu bao was one of my favorite things to eat.   I was most definitely a "bao boy".  And whenever I wanted to eat it, my Goong Goong would run all the way to Chinatown to buy it for me.   It didn't matter that Kwong On was much closer.   He only wanted the very best for his grandson.   Originally this meant hopping into his '55 chevy, and driving there.  But as he got older, well into his 80's, he would still insist on going all the way to Char Hung Sut for me.   This meant that in the morning, he would hop a bus, take an almost hour long ride to Chinatown, buy a box of manapua, then hop another bus and another almost hour long ride home.   In his 80's.   Just to bring me some manapua.   There are a lot of things that my parents and grandparents did for me that you'd consider being spoiled.   In my mind though, it wasn't how much they would money they would spend on me, as much as the time they devoted to me.   This ridiculously inconvenient trip was how much my Goong Goong loved me, and I will never forget it.

Manapua, Pepeiao, Siu Mai, and Ma Tai Sou from Char Hung Sut

Was it worth it?   Going all the way to Char Hung Sut for some manapua?   To me, nothing will ever compare to Char Hung Sut's manapua.   Yes, the bread is pretty thick.   But that doesn't mean that it's stale, tough, or something you'd want to rip off and throw away.   It's nice and soft, but chewy enough to be filling.   No, it's not as light as other people's manapua, but that wasn't the point was it?   The meat inside, isn't really filled with sauce, it's not really bright red or anything.   It's a much simpler, natural brown, but totally flavorful meat.   It is so finely minced, not chunky like other manapuas.  The best part is that there are no fillers.  No unsavory chunks of fat.  No hard chunks of meat.  No weird crunches of onion or chestnut or antyhing else.  Not like some other places, where you bite into it, and will spit out a small piece of some unwanted filler.  There is nothing here but pure finely minced meat.   It's the style that my Po Po and Goong Goong would (and did) approve of.

Manapua from Char Hung Sut

Besides the manapua itself, the pepeiao was fantastic.   I'm not usually a fan of pepeiao.   The reason is, that other places who try to copy Char Hung Sut's style, will make that same really thick pi and it's usually kind of tough.   I usually don't like chewing through it, as it's way too starchy it just doesn't taste very good.   On the other hand, even now, biting into the pepeiao, I was surprised at how fresh and soft the pi is.   It looks thick, but it's amazingly soft.  The siu mai, well, it's just a beautifully big stuffed pork hash, again with no fillers that you bite into and just want to spit out.    The ma tai sou (or water chestnut flaky pastry), was beautifully flaky.   Other places that make ma tai sou, just make it too dry, and it's hard to swallow.  Char Hung Sut's is light and flaky with yummy moist filling. 

The other thing that I always like from Char Hung Sut (which was missing from this menu), is their yip jai, the little char siu filled mochi wrapped and steamed in a ti leaf.   Once again, Char Hung Sut makes the best, because their mochi is the softest, and their finely minced char siu doesn't have any of those unsightly fillers.   The beautiful thing about yip jai, is again how local it is.   The char siu is totally Chinese, the mochi is so Japanese, and the ti leaf is such a Hawaiian touch.   It is such a wonderful reminder of the blending of our cultures.

Tastes change and evolve, and as we no longer toil on the sugar cane fields, there may be a day when we look for a less filling manapua.   But Char Hung Sut, and the manapua man, have certainly left their legacy on our culinary heritage.   Much the same way my Goong Goong and Po Po left their impression on me.

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days

To most little kids, the best part of eating chicken is having the drumstick.  Basically, it's just the right size for little hands to hold and little mouths to bite into.   It even comes with a built in handle to hold.  For me however, growing up in a Chinese family, the best part of the chicken was the foot.   That may sound a little strange to you, but consider that to most people the tastiest thing on a piece of chicken is the skin, and the chicken foot is basically all skin and little else.  As I've mentioned, my Po Po would always cook chicken feet.  My Goong Goong would pretty much have one every night, along with a piece of her yuk bang (pork hash).   But the way she would cook it was different from everyone else.   Basically she would do a simple "white" chicken foot, similar to how you get cold ginger chicken in a restaurant.   But instead of the ginger, green onion, and oil sauce that you get with cold ginger chicken, we would just eat it with shoyu.  I remember, I would hold the foot the same as a drumstick, and dip the whole "palm" into the shoyu, but eat each one of the fingers first, one at a time.  I would save the palm itself for last, as it was the easiest, meatiest part.  It never even occurred to me that eating a foot was something strange or unappetizing.  I was 5, and it was simply one of my favorite things to eat.

I have never seen anyone else serve chicken feet the way my Po Po did.  But if you go to any dim sum place, you will find something on the menu called foong jau, or phoenix claws.  That's basically a nice way of marketing chicken feet.   It's not the same.  For one thing, they cut off the leg part, so you no longer have that handle to hold, like on a drumstick.   For another, it's not white, but always barbecued and steamed, sometimes a little spicy, sometimes with a little black bean, sometimes with a little curry.  While much more seasoned and flavorful than the way my Po Po did it, I still miss hers sometimes.  When I was growing up, the best place to get foong jau was Sea Fortune in Chinatown.   But they changed hands, and they're not quite the same anymore.   The original chef, found his way to Kaimuki, and they opened a restaurant called Happy Days.  

Foong Jau at Happy Days

Happy Days is still one of my favorite places to go to get dim sum.   They've got a really light and sweet baked char siu bao.   When you've got a good char siu bao, and a good foong jau, then I'm pretty happy.   Everything else pretty much falls in line for me.   Har gao, siu mai, spinich dumpings, seafood rolls, everything else is just as high quality there.

Baked Char Siu Bao at Happy Days

But I started wondering, if their foong jau is that good, how would they handle some of my Po Po's other dishes.   I've already said how McCully Chop Suey used to do yuk bang and oyster rolls almost the same way that my Po Po did it.    But they were where we would go to get everyday food.  Chinese call it ga serng sik, or the food that you would eat at home every day.   What about stuff that wasn't everyday fare?   Well, the possibly the best thing my Po Po cooked was her kau yuk.   Her kau yuk was awesome, it was the pinnacle of old style, grandma made, Chinese cooking.   She would only cook it on special occasions, because it was such a long and difficult thing to cook.   She would boil it, take it out, poke holes in it to drain the fat, then boil it again.   She would boil it 3 or 4 times, so that was the most tender flavorful thing you've ever tasted.   I have never tasted kau yuk the way she did it ever again, but Happy Days comes pretty close.

Taro Kau Yuk at Happy Days

Happy Days' kau yuk is slightly different than my Po Po's, but it's similar.   Most other places, especially fast food places, that offer kau yuk, offer this bright red version of it, as if they are using char siu sauce.   That bright red kau yuk is usually pretty tough, the fat in between the layers is congealed hard, the skin is rubbery and spongy, and it's just not very appetizing.   Happy Days' kau yuk is natural brown and very tender, almost like my Po Po's.   It's remarkably bad for you, as my sister would hound me about, because it's so fatty, but it tastes like heaven.   Not only is the meat tender, but the skin on top has the texture of a very soft cheese, and the fat in between the layers is so buttery it literally melts in your mouth.   But it is the combination of these layers, skin, fat, meat, fat, meat that is so spectacular tasting.   It's like spreading butter on your bread.   You wouldn't want to eat straight butter, and plain bread has great texture but is kind of bland.  Put the two together and you've got something warm, filling, and tasty.   That's what the layers do.   If you're going to splurge once in a while, and indulge in something fatty, this is the dish to do it with.

There are 2 big differences between he kau yuk a happy days and my Po Po's.   For one, there is a thin gravy over theirs, that my Po Po's didn't have (or need for that matter).  For the other, she would serve hers over a bed of wu jook, a type of bean curd, which would soak up all of the flavor and was usually one of the best parts.   Happy Days on the other hand serves theirs another classic Hawaiian Chinese way, with slices of taro in between.   This is particularly significant because it is one of the reasons that the Chinese plantation workers felt so at home in Hawaii.   Cantonese cooking incorporates taro.  Not in exactly the same way that the Hawaiians made poi of course.   But seeing the Hawaiians utilize taro established a kind of kinship, one element of common ground between the 2 peoples.

Wu Tao Gok at Happy Days

Didn't know that taro is used in Chinese cooking?   One of my wife's absolute favorite dim sum dishes, is the wu tao gok or taro dumping.  The one at Happy Days is of course second to none.  The outside is crispy and flaky and the inside is so creamy and savory.   Again, it is the combination of the crispiness and the creaminess that makes for such a perfect bite.   Other places that do wu tao gok can sometimes get the texture inside too thick and starchy, which can get kinda dry.   Happy Day's is perfectly creamy, and an amazing example of the texture you can actually get out of taro.

Shrimp and Chicken Taro Basket at Happy Days

By contrast, another classic Chinese taro dish, and completely different taro texture, at Happy Day's is their taro basket.  You know how good taro chips taste?   Well, this taro basket has that same awesome crunchiness.   The best part is that it stands up really well to the gravy from the vegetables and meats inside.   Whereas other places' taro baskets can get soggy very quickly, this maintains its crunch with just the slight softening from the gravy.   The perfect texture.

House Special Chow Mein at Happy Days

Just to top things off here, we should mention the great chow mein at Happy Days.   Again, it's done in that Hawaiian Chinese style, where you've got a crispy fried noodle, softening to the gravy and ingredients on top, similar to the taro basket.   It's almost like having mein bang, or cake noodle, but not quite.   They do theirs with that really refined, thin Hong Kong style noodle, rather than it's slightly thicker, chewier Cantonese counterpart.  This is a very classic Chinese chow mein in Hawaii.  

With my Po Po's passing, I'm resigned to the fact that I'm never going to again taste the flavors she crafted with her loving hand.   No one could ever duplicate or replace that.   But with the classic Hawaiian Chinese dishes at Happy Days, these are still... well... happy days.