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.
I was in Singapore for the entire CNY so I did this maybe 9 times! It’s pretty fun. The best one had some high quality salmon on top.
9 times? Impressive. And I’m jealous!
Very interesting about raising it high, wish I knew. I experienced “yu sheng” at a friend’s house. My mom is from S’pore but she never showed us this dish before, umm.
yusheng was “invented” in it’s current form only in the ’60s, so maybe she left before then? i hope you’ve become a fan! i think it’s great.
I was bamboozled by Singapore into paying $88/person for yusheng (at an admittedly swank joint) on CNY’s eve. I am shamed.
Managed two yusheng’s over CNY, the swank pricy one Dan mentioned above, and another at Anne-Lise’s work dinner. Both tasted pretty much the same, i.e. quite tasty.
haha. there’s not much variation, despite the price difference (don’t tell dan). but pretty darn good no matter how many times you eat it. i think i just love sweet and sour sauce.
whenever my sister makes potato salad, i always eat them in less than a minute or so he he. i just love all sorts of salad. “.’
i eat every kind of salad, but my favorite is of course fruit salad and chicken salad `”.
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