I wish you lots of money! AKA Gong xi fa cai!

Well it’s the year 4718 on the lunar calendar. Not as weighty as 2020 but still impressive. We were sad that we couldn’t spend it with our family, as is tradition so I decided to celebrate it by making my own dumplings 🥟 and having some friends over. The kids were also excited to receive their hong bao’s, or red envelopes. It didn’t quite work out that way since we all got the stinking flu and were shivering in bed the whole week leading up to then new year. We ended up canceling dinner with friends but luckily the dumplings were already made.

Knowing that it might take me a while to find all of the ingredients to make dumplings (chives or cebollino, sesame oil, also a thin rolling pin for the wrappers) I started early and froze the dumplings a week beforehand. I could literally feel the flu creeping up on me as I sealed the last one. I made a traditional Shandong dumpling of fish and chives. Then I turned my attention to the red envelopes. They were so hard to find! There are these stores in Spain that sell everything; kitchenware, yarn, stationary, hosiery, potting soil, everything! They are called hipers or Bazars and they are always operated by Chinese people. People here have an annoying habit of calling them “Chinese shops”. I find that racist so I call them Bazars. Because you wouldn’t call the bread shop the Spanish shop. Why? Because Spanish people do more than sell freaking bread! But I’m going off topic. The fact is these Bazars have almost anything you could want and there are 4 right by my house. Vance and I went to all four and none of them had red envelopes. What? How can that be? Three of said they just sold out. I was doubtful about that. I was starting to panic. Chinese New Year was just days away and where the heck was I supposed to find red envelopes?? Could I just make envelopes out of red paper? Could I color a regular envelope? Would that be bad luck? This was not a good way to start a new year! In a Hail Mary move, we went to lunch in a Chinese restaurant in another neighborhood. When I saw that the food was pretty authentic, I decided to ask the owner if she knew where I could find red envelopes. And she, angel that she was, just gave me some!!! Amazing! Of course, right after, Vance saw some in a grocery store. But it was an auspicious start. We had dumplings and red envelopes for the start of the Year of the rat 🐀 !

So, Gong xi fa cai! Which doesn’t mean Happy New year or anything. It means, I hope you get rich! Um… ok!