For New Year’s Luck, Eat Salad: raw fish salad (yu sheng 鱼生)

Yusheng (鱼生) is a Chaozhou appetizer eaten during Chinese New Year among the Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese. It’s been part of my family’s New Year feast ever since my parents moved to Malaysia eight years ago, and I’m unreasonably fond of it. It’s not exactly gourmet food – a salad consisting of a variety of shredded vegetables (usually lettuce, pickled carrots, turnips, peppers, ginger and other unidentified oddly-colored vegetables), sprinkled with peanuts and crispy deep-fried wonton bits, and topped with slices of raw fish.  You can get a great detailed recipe here.  It’s then drenched in a dressing based on plum sauce and all family members join in to toss the salad using their chopsticks.  A word of warning: the higher you toss the salad, the higher your fortunes are supposed to rise – so watch out for your clothes if you’re ever invited to a Malaysian Chinese New Year’s feast.

Yusheng is a New Year food because the name yusheng (鱼生) is translated as “raw fish,” but in Chinese it also sounds like 余升, which means “increasing abundance”; i.e., let’s get rich this year. Chinese people are not-a-little-bit fond of eating foods homophonous with well wishes for the coming year, so this dish is not only delicious, but lucky.

Note: My vegetarian friend joined us for dinner this year, so alas, the salmon sashimi was left out of the dish. It remains however, a happy neon-colored New Year treat.