PHOTO COURTESY/ J. Chen & K. Kusayanagi Chen and Kusayanagi gather around the table to commemorate the new year with food and family. Their celebrations would not be complete without a variety of traditional delicacies including white rice and seafood, as well as sashimi and homemade bento boxes.
By Joanne Su Chan,
Staff Writer
Welcoming the new year ranges from homemade mooncakes and ozoni to visiting temples and wearing hanboks. Students at TCHS celebrate the new year with traditions that center around family and food.
Senior Jenny Chen
The unique designs on golden brown mooncakes cover Chen’s kitchen table as their sugary aroma fills the room.
To celebrate Lunar New Year, her family makes mooncakes, a Chinese pastry with a typically sweet and dense filling made of lotus paste on the inside. Each cake’s design is made by special molds to resemble the moon.
Chen’s family specializes in wu ren yue bing, a mixed nut mooncake with raisins and cranberries. Other mooncake fillings include red bean and another made of sugar and white pepper. Mooncakes gifted to friends and family symbolize togetherness. Other than the pastry, Chen also indulges in Chinese dishes that are said to bring good luck. There is chang shou mian, which translates to “long life noodles,” and fish for wealth, but Chen’s favorite is pork cutlet, representative of prosperity.
“The holidays are a way to get a break from the real world,” Chen said. “For a week you’re only thinking about preparing all of the food and on the day of, you’re together with family.”
Sophomore Koko Kusayanagi
The warm scent of mochi-filled ozoni soup and osechi ryori boxes bring Kysayanagi comfort and nostalgia as commemorating the new year in Japanese culture is a running tradition she’s known all her life.
On the first day of the new year, Kusayanagi’s looks forward to osechi ryori, a Japanese new year food that contains different types of colorful delicacies. They are packaged in stacked boxes that all have a different meaning, bringing well-wishes for the new year. Kusayanagi looks most forward to ozoni, a rich soup containing mochi and vegetables. Her family also makes a small decoration called kagamimochi, which is made of two circular mochis stacked on each other topped with a tangerine.
Before COVID-19, Kusayanagi would go to a temple in Little Tokyo to pray and receive good luck charms called omamori.
“Celebrating the new year with my family is always nostalgic,” Kusayanagi said. “It’s a combination of feeling at home but because of COVID-19 some of these traditions have been put on pause. Hopefully we can get back to these traditions next year.”
Senior Joshua Park
The rich green of the spinach dish, samsaek namul, and a pop of red kimchi crowd the table as the simmering of tteokguk, a Korean rice cake soup, catches Park’s eye when he joins his family at the dining table.
Eaten on New Year’s Day, tteokguk contains circular pieces of tteok, also known as white rice cake, along with thin strips of sliced egg yolk, crispy seaweed, tender meat and aromatics like onions, scallions and garlic.
In Korean culture, the soup is believed to bring good luck and bump your age up one year on the new year day instead of your birthday. Celebrating the holiday consists of spending time with both sides of the family for Park.
The elders mainly dress in traditional Korean clothes called hanbok but the younger people do something called sebae which is respecting the elderly. The elders sit in a higher position as the younger family members say “새해 복 많이 받으세요 (saehae bok mani badeuseyo)” which means ‘have lots of luck in the new year’. They then receive words of advice for the new year. For Park, part of Lunar New Year celebrations include Yut Nori, a traditional board game that includes four wooden sticks that combine to mean different moves. The goal is to try and get the four pieces all the way throughout the board.
“A big part of the new year is food, family and just getting together,” Park said. “Celebrating with both sides of my family and seeing everyone is always fun.”