Playing with food

Today I participated in one of the most curious Chinese New Year traditions so far! It is called Yu Sheng and it's a typical CNY dish. So what is so special about this? Let me tell you:

At the beginning it looks like this. It does not appear very extraordinary since it's basically shreds of carrots and sweet potato. Along comes this woman in the middle and starts adding condiments such as chips and different sauces while she recites some good luck invocations (in chinese of course, thank god I had my awesome (and very pregnant) private translator to help me understand what this woman was saying (Thanks, Xien!))

From left to right: some caucassian girl, the waitress performing our good luck ritual and my translator. Notice the pinaples hanging from the ceiling, they have them everywhere during CNY. Don't ask me why. It's probably good fortune, but the only answer I got so far was "They are good luck, because you have to roll them into every room of your house... No, wait! That is only when you move into a new house... or was that jumping over a small fire in the dorstill. Oh, no, that is when you get back home from prison!..." Where do these people get the ideas for their rituals from!!?

Anyways, this is what the dish then looks like. And all of this would not be very impressive so far if we did not do this:

Yes, we stand up, grab our chopsticks and start tossing that stuff around and throwing it up. Why? For the same reason you roll tropical fruits all over your appartment. The cool thing is you have to shout out your wishes while you do this and then they will come true. So imaginge everyone standing there throwing around this food and shouting stuff (mostly in chinese of course, we were only 3 non-asians). A picture for the gods.

Inevitably, the place looked like this after we were done, but that's a small price for having as many wishes as you want come true, right?