Chinese celebrates the Winter Solstice to mark the longest night of the year – and the beginning of the lengthening of days. They call it Dongzhi or Tang Yuen.
It is a tradition to serve glutinous rice dumpling balls, also called tangyuan in broth. Tang stands for reunion and yuan means round or complete. Tangyuan are sweet, sticky glutinous balls made by sweet rice and served with hot sugar water. Because they could be hard for children to swallow, it became tradition to color them with food dye.
Other varieties of tangyuan are filled with different ingredients inside such as red bean paste, creamy peanut or sesame paste. Also, tangyuan can be served with whole red bean or whole peanut soup and become a tasty dessert.
Eating tangyuan on the Winter Solstice is a required custom. All children are told that people can add one year for their age after eating tangyuan.
To my family, relatives and friends....."Happy "DongZhi". Hokkien Lang called it "TangChek".
Hope you'll have a lot of fun rolling those colourful balls and enjoy eating them as well.
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