Feisty Shrimp and Missing Mushrooms ... Happy Chinese New Year!

The year of the monkey wiggled in on Monday, February 8th, signaling the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar and Chinese New Year! Xiannian kuaile! (Pronounced sshin-nyen kwhy-ler). Happy New Year, Mandarin style!

Donna, Bryan, and I in China
on Chinese New Year.

Celebrating the new year in China is as easy as pulling your chair up to the table. It's all about eating with family and friends. "Hot pot" is the usual fare of the season. It reminds me of fondue, only trickier. The hot pot, or a boiling pot of water, sits on a portable burner and dominates the center of the table. The table must be circular as it's an equal opportunity conversation setting. Nothing goes better with hot pot than relationships.

The universal rule is "you don't eat hot pot with people you don't like." That could have something to do with the double dipping and lavish exchange of saliva that takes place in the group pot. Everyone cooks and eats out of that one bubbling mix. Nothing spells unity like hot pot.

Bowls of just about anything surround the hot pot: mussels, greenery (of every shade and texture), chicken feet, rice noodles, oysters, squid, eel, fish balls, tofu, mushrooms, vegetables, and shrimp, all raw and fresh from the street market. Since my city in China is a coastal city, hot pot is always heavy in seafood. Shrimp are usually the most difficult to control on the table. Everything is "directly from the sea this afternoon" fresh, and the shrimp, alive and kicking, make a feisty delicacy.

During one new year's hot pot I attended, the shrimp took to jumping out of the boiling water on to the table whenever they were thrown in. Cooking them seemed almost barbaric, especially when they slapped you in the face in their attempts to escape. The chop sticks would start clicking and dunking around the table, and the shrimp never had a chance.

Once you throw your tofu into the pot, the next problem is finding it. Perhaps it sinks under a sea of bok choy and buries itself beneath the rice noodles. The natural impulse is to do a little "chopstick washing," swishing your chopsticks about in the broth to find your tofu. I tried that approach at first, but it appeared that rather than wash my chopsticks in the mutual eating pot, it was easier to just take whatever floated to the top and was handy. After all, you're among friends. Your fish ball is my fish ball.

Eastern culture values time around the table. Talking, eating, cooking, enjoying each other's company for several hours. These are the joys of the East. No rush. Another cup of tea. This is the essence of a Chinese New Year celebration.

The Eastern culture of Jesus' day was much the same. In fact, the Hebrews would even recline around their tables, allowing for hours of relaxed talking and sharing. Although hot pot was probably not on the menu, there were mutual dipping dishes, and with all those fishermen friends, Jesus probably ate plenty of fish. And He loved to share a meal with anyone - short tax collectors who sat in trees, good friends just off their boats, big crowds, tax collectors, wedding guests, families. Meal times were for relationship building. Dinners were a place to meet God.

How are meal times at your house? Hurried? Pressured? Eat and run? TV dinners or boxed mac and cheese? Mobile phones dominating the attention of everyone at the table?

MAYBE A HOT POT IS IN ORDER!

Cook together around a gurgling pot. Laugh about missing mushrooms and feisty shrimp. Engage in a chop stick battle over the last noodle. Get to know each other a little better.

A hot pot dinner reminds me of one of those times God talked about for teaching our children the command to love Him with all our hearts, souls, and strength. He said to impress this command on the children when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down or get up, or ...

when we have family hot pot night!

Happy Chinese New Year!