Sunday, February 05, 2012

The Dragon Has Arrived

The year of the Dragon (Water Dragon, specifically) has come to be!  As the celebrating come to a close, I want to share pictures from the Chinese Garden and also pictures from a Chinese New Year tea tasting.

The Chinese Garden, decorated with red hanging lanterns and colorful paper lanterns on the rocks


A garden volunteer told me that Wintersweet always blooms for Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year party

At the Chinese New Year party, we enjoyed all kinds of delicious foods including long life noodles, citrus (to welcome wealth), Chinese tea eggs, pot stickers, pumpkin seeds, Chinese buns filled with lotus and bean paste, mung bean cakes, sesame cookies, coconut cookies and much more. 

For the tea tasting, we worked our way through 8 various teas, focusing mostly on teas grown in Wuyi. 
  • Golden water turtle (Shui Jin Gui)
  • Iron Arhat (Tie Luo Han)
  • Big Red Robe (Da Hong Pao)
  • A mix of Iron Goddess of Mercy (Ti Kuan Yin) and Golden Osmanthus
  • Sui Xian (Water Sprite)
  • Rou Gui (Cinnamon)
  • Big Red Robe #2 (Da Hong Pao)
  • Old Growth Oriental Beauty (Bai Hao) - not Wuyi
My DH is a Dragon, so here's to wishing him prosperity and health, and the same to you.

5 comments:

Marilyn Miller said...

Love seeing the lanterns at the garden and the bittersweet, it is beautiful. I was just thinking I hadn't been to the garden for awhile and was missing it. Thanks!

Amy said...

Last year I learned to make potstickers. This year I learned lo-mein. Next year I am thinking those cakes with bean paste. Mmm. Do send a recipe if you have one.

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed your lovely photos. I know nothing about the Chinese New Year celebrations, so this is quite interesting to me.

Angela McRae said...

No collards and black-eyed peas, eh? So fun to see how different cultures celebrate the seasons, years, etc.!

David Galli said...

Thanks for posting about our lovely time & our lovely teas! And nice photos, too. :) Hope to see you in March, if not sooner.