Together Network’s ‘Cook Your Culture’: Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快乐!

Last week, the Together Network hosted their first Cook Your Culture of 2023 on Chinese New Year. The famous festival, also known as ‘Spring Festival’, celebrates the New Year according to the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. This year, Chinese New Year was on the 22^nd of January, and celebrations usually last 15 days.

There are a plethora of ‘luck-related’ traditions and customs that are associated with the festival, as it was traditionally a time to honour deities and ancestors. Customs include wearing the colour red, eating fish, giving red envelopes of money and fireworks to ward off evil. Nowadays, the celebratory period revolves around spending time with family and friends, eating lots of homemade food and luck-related traditions!

During the fun Cook Your Culture event, Jingwen Croft Jiao, Sharife Anderson and Anisah Ali demonstrated how to cook a traditional veggie-friendly Chinese dish called ‘Tomato and Egg stir-fry’. The session also included a knowledge share and Q&A about Chinese culture, various customs which take place during Chinese New Year, as well as some of Jingwen’s personal family traditions.