About My Culture | Special Dishes to Celebrate Birthday - Chinese Cuisine

Everyone loves to celebrate the birthday of their loved ones and we of course love to celebrate our own birthday with our loved ones too. While celebrating birthday by dining out at restaurant is awesome, celebrating birthday at cosy home with own's culture is not only memorable and unique, but with its significant meaning too.

I choose this topic to reminisce my old childhood days at the place I grew up, at the same time I am proud to share my local culture of celebrating birthday with special dishes. My father is a Hokkien from Penang, my mother a Hakka from Selangor and we children grew up at Sibu, Sarawak, a small town full of Fu Chow people. So we grew up having a mixture of Hokkien culture, Hakka culture and Fu Chow culture. However, basically it is from Chinese Culture. Let us move on to the showcase of the special dishes and what are their meaning and significance 😉.

1. Longevity Noodle in Chicken Soup with 2 red eggs

This is the No.1 special dish used to celebrate birthday, not cake. At my hometown Sibu, when I was young, I attended many birthday parties of my friends which did not have a birthday cake, but a big pot of chicken soup with alot of noodles and a big plate of red eggs for everyone.

The noodle used is 'mee sua' in Hokkien, means flour vermicelli. It is used because of its nature that is long, and smooth and unbreakable. In other words, 'mee sua' is also called as Longevity Noodle a.k.a. long-life noodles, or 长寿面, “Chang Shou Mian”. Chinese believes one who eats it will have long life. Hence, it is our culture to celebrate birthday with our loved ones with this dish.

Mee sua

The strands can go very long. Usually we are encouraged to not bite it but slurp all into the mouth, then only chew. To not break the longevity.

The noodle comes with soup based from chicken soup. And there will be a chicken drumstick for everyone and two mushrooms. Drumstick is used to signify the person is prosperous enough to eat good food. Mushroom grows very fast, signifies good growth for the person. Why 2 mushrooms? Chinese like anything in double. Means double growth for the person in anything.

You can cook the chicken soup in anyway you like. I love this one with herbs.

And the birthday person must finish two eggs of red eggs. They are actually hard-boiled eggs which shells have been dyed with red food coloring. Egg means the birth of a person. Red means wealth and prosperity. Again, 2 red eggs means double wealth and prosperity for the person.

Red food colouring

After you boiled the eggs, coat them with the dye, leave it to dry then they are done.

Finish up this bowl of noodle soup, you will have longevity, double growth in everything, good life with double wealth. Who doesn't want to eat this, right? 😉

2. Any dish with century egg and salted egg

Additionaly, there will be a side dish prepared with century eggs and salted eggs. Eggs again - because it signifies birth. Birthday celebration with eggs are very meaningful in our local culture. According to my mom in Hakka culture or her own culture, not many get to eat century eggs and salted eggs as they are more expensive. So to eat them means it is auspicious and the person is successful and favourable.

Either there will be a spinach dish stir fry with century and salted eggs or minced meat congee with century or salted eggs. Or just eat them as it is.

Century eggs, in Chinese it is called 皮蛋, are preserved in a mixture of clay, salt, ash, rice hulls and quicklime for several months (and no, is not for 100 years or 1000 years). After the preservation, you no longer need to cook the eggs. Just crack open and see the beauty of the transformation and eat them, usually you can coupled the eggs with pickled ginger.

Salted eggs (usually duck eggs), in Chinese it is called 咸蛋, are eggs soaked in brine, or packed in damp salted charcoal. After the process, the eggs will have a salty arome with smooth texture egg-white and red-orangy firm egg yolk.

After washing away the charcoal, it looks like this, shiny white.

You can boil it or steam it. I boil it together with my rice.

Done. Take out the egg and cut it into half together with its shell.

Look at the beautiful golden egg yolk.

Additionally, you can just eat the century eggs and salted eggs as they are, without adding them into spinach dish or meat congee.

Salted egg, pickled ginger and century egg.

Some of my Caucasian friends cannot stand the smell of the century eggs and salted eggs but we love them. Have you tried it? Do you like it?

3. Steamed huge golden pomphret

The last and final dish to celebrate birthday will be steamed huge golden pomphret. I intend to do it for this write up but I was disappointed to find no huge fresh golden pomphret around, just small tiny or medium-sized one, and not fresh.

Image Source

Why golden pomphret? Because golden means wealth. And fish dish because the word 'fish' in chinese is "yu" 鱼, to flow with chinese greetings "nian nian you yu" or 年年有餘 means every year will have more than enough, surplus. Some people will take it literally as in "年年有鱼", every year will have fish, whereby fish signifies livelihood and survival. Up to the person which he wants to believe in. Both are good.

We usually enjoy a good dish of steamed or fried golden pomphret as a family and I love the bonding time during eating time. Steamed golden pomphret is an easy dish to make. I use seabass fish below since I can't find golden huge pomphret.

Two tomatoes, spring onion, garlic and ginger.

Heat up oil and stir fry garlic and ginger until fragrant.

Steam the fish for 10 minutes

Drain away the water

Pour in the ginger and garlic together with the oil, add tomatoes and spring onion, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, steam for another 5 minutes.

Dish is done. Just imagine it is huge golden pomphret. Served with rice.

Now we have more reasons to eat fish daily for daily ample surplus.

I really value all these cultures that come with significant awesome meanings. And of course on top of all these dishes, we celebrate birthday with birthday cake with blowing candles and birthday song.

His 3rd birthday.

My 2nd son celebrated his 3rd birthday last year July. Because he is tube-fed and did not eat from mouth, we asked him touch the eggs.

Holding two red eggs. May you grow well in every manner.

And he did. Just after his 3rd birthday, he was off breathing machine and started to learn eating last December. We proclaim all the above blessings unto him, believing God of the universe will bestow unto him one by one.

Thank you for your time to read about my culture in using special dishes to celebrate birthday.

---