{"id":10728,"date":"2020-01-25T09:38:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T14:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=10728"},"modified":"2020-01-25T09:38:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-25T14:38:20","slug":"chinese-new-year-4718-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=10728","title":{"rendered":"Chinese New Year 4718 (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instagram Teaser 1\/25\/2020 <\/h4>\n

(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)<\/em>
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\n\u606d\u79a7\u767c\u8ca1! G\u014dng xi f\u0101 c\u00e1i!<\/p>\n

The Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year is upon us!<\/p>\n

4718 is the Year of the Rat \ud83d\udc00. I’m no Chinese zodiac scholar, but based on what I see in our subway system, rats are extremely talented when it comes to accessing food and are happy to indulge in a comprehensive variety of cuisines, never playing favorites.<\/p>\n

I can relate to this.<\/p>\n

And apropos of eating, there’s one aspect of this spectacular holiday that I particularly enjoy and that’s the way wordplay and homophones factor into the selection of traditional foods. An example is nian gao<\/em>, a glutinous rice cake sweetened with brown or white sugar and a homophone for \u201chigh year\u201d \u2013 with the connotation of elevating oneself higher with each new year, perhaps even lifting one\u2019s spirits.<\/p>\n

But there was one year when my inner rat was thwarted in attempting to access a particular nian gao<\/em> \u2013 and what should have literally been a snap turned into a complete mystery.<\/p>\n

Curious? Please read my very short story, \u201cThe Case of the Uncrackable Case!\u201d<\/a>
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The Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year is upon us! Read on…. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138,24,7],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-10728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","category-out-about","category-stories","tag-chinese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10728"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10769,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10728\/revisions\/10769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}