The above is a very well-known piece Spring Festival Overture by the Chinese composer Li Huanzhi which is always played during the Chinese New Year. This young Chinese traditional orchestra played it fantastically.

This year is the Year of the Tiger, so we should talk about the tiger. Tiger is the most handsome animal in the Chinese zodiac, and the most powerful demeanor. When it roars, the mountains will collapse. There are many Chinese proverbs on Tiger, such as 虎背熊腰，in English means “A Tiger’s Back and A Bear’s Waist” There is another one: 龙腾虎步，it means “Dragon Rising in a Tiger’s pace”.

Many years ago, I composed piece for marimba solo “Dragons Rising and Tigers Leaping”:

Here is my marimba solo piece:

We had a lot of rain here the Christmas week, which is good for the drought in the Southern California. It is the icing on the cake for the mountain scenery around us, which is extraordinarily enchanting. Taking Gigi to hike to see the wonderland every day is full of positive energy! 💪💪💪

In the early spring of February, the daylight becomes longer day by day, camellias and azaleas of various colors are blooming in the garden, and the hibernating plants are slowly beginning to sprout, and the footsteps of the Spring are getting closer and closer. The Omicron epidemic has also improved greatly. I hope the Year of the Tiger will bring us good news: the epidemic will end soon🙏🙏🙏!

In the past, usually, 2 weeks before the arrival of the Chinese New Year, I began to stock traditional new year’s goods to prepare for the Festival. Shopping in our local Chinese supermarkets is full of holiday festivities: the variety of rice cakes with red stamps, the customary New Year’s couplets, and small auspicious red packets of New Year’s “Ya sui Qian” (money for children) are dizzying. I remember a folk song: “Twenty-three, sugar melon sticks, twenty-four, house sweeping day, twenty-five, make tofu, twenty-six, go to cut meat, twenty-seven, go to slaughter chicken, twenty-eight, white flour , Twenty-nine, full of incense bucket, on the 30th, sit overnight in the dark. The first day of the new year comes out and the heat is hot. “Although I’ve been in US for more than 30 years, the Chinese New Year celebration in at our home is no less than that of my distant hometown in China. On the Lunar New Year’s Eve dinner, relatives and friends gathered around a large round table full of delicious chicken, duck, fish, fruits and vegetables etc. We were talking happily while enjoying the feast, waiting for the moment when firecrackers were lit at the midnight of the New Year’s Eve.

I began to decorate our home 1 week ago with traditional Chinese artifacts and. picked many the seasonal flowers and fruit to add good fortunes boost our energies in the Year of Ox. It was fun!🧧🐅🧧🐅

Here is a chamber piece Variations for Chinese Zodiac Signs (for piano and percussion, premiered by Erik Forrester and Lisa Solvester) that I composed a few years ago, and I’m using it as a “Happy New Year” greeting.

For the Chinese New Year this year, we still obediently follow the advice of the government to minimize gatherings, and only spend the Chinese New Year with a few friends who have been vaccinated for three times. The past 2 years of the epidemic have been too long, and finally the Year of the Tiger is ushered in. I hope that the Year of the Tiger will bring a lot of prosperity.

My home grown baby Bok choy and Takecai (broadleaf mustard) are at the peak of growth, they both are so popular at my hometown Shanghai and make me very nostalgic.

After rains, the warm sun reappeared, it cared my vegetables. From the distance, the emerald green leaves seem to have been covered the garden like a “carpet”. I took Gigi to hike in the nearby Eaton Canyon National Park. It was a mesmerizing feeling! California Sunshine in the winter time is especially go

A few days ago, it was a rare rainy day, I went to Cstco to shop and happily saw many kinds of Chinese New Year goods all over the place. America is great, multi-cultural, all ethnic groups can take turns to celebrate festivals. On shelves, there were auspicious yellow chrysanthemums, lush green water bamboo greeneries, decorative plants with the bright red Chinese character word “Fu” (happy in English), the French Remy Cognac with an Ox etc. I was so inspired by such festival atmosphere, I bought some of these felicitous items, at the cashier, the young blonde cashier said to me in Chinese in a friendly way: “Gong Xi Fa Cai!” We must have a Happy Year of the OX to celebrate the whole world and rejuvenate the earth! 🧧🧧🧧

The menu for our New Year’s Eve dinner of this year are:

1) Spring rolls and Shanghai three fresh wontons

I had already used the time I spent on the phone with my family to harvest my own vegetable garden “nongjiale”, and packaged the “appetizer” with meat and vegetables mixed properly.

2) Yanduxian

Yāndǔxiān (腌笃鲜) is a Chinese traditional dish from Yangtze River Region. It is very popular in my hometown Shanghai. “Yān” means salted pork; and “dǔ” denotes the sound of the boiling soup, and “xiān” signifies the delicate flavor of the soup. The ingredients basically include spring bamboo shoots, pork (including various parts), bacon, ham, tofu skin knots, bok choy and other ingredients.

For my own “Yanduxian” recipe, I use Hunan bacon, Jinhua ham, and Shanghai bacon. I stew the various delicacies with my own turkey frame broth, simmering it very slowly, the exotic taste of various meats and winter bamboo shoots makes me homesick. After 3 hours simmering, I add tofu knots, baby bok choys and Japanese mustard greens from my own vegetable garden, What a great feeling to be able to eat the old taste of my hometown.

3) Eight Treasure Duck

Eight Treasure Duck is a traditional famous dish in Shanghai and Suzhou region in China. The recipe requires a boned duck open back, stuffed with special 8 kinds of delicacies buckled in a large bowl, sealed with cellophane and steamed for hours. the original flavor is prominent and delicious.

Traditionally, “8” is a Chinese auspicious number, which represents the Chinese people’s love for even numbers, representing the success of career and family. The best example is that the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games started at 8:8:8 PM on August 8, 2008.

4) Steamed Fish

Fish dish is paramountly important in the tradition of Chinese New Year. Fish, pronounced, in Chinese, as “Yu”, phonetically same as wealthy and abundance in Chinese. Fish is a symbol of prosperity and reproduction. Having fish on Chinese New Year brings a lot of fortunes, it is an essential auspicious dish.

5) Pearl meat balls

In the past years, my Huangmei Opera singer cousin always made it to bring to our home because he made the best “Pearl Meat Balls”. In my childhood, I remember my father used to make this dish on New Year’s Eve. He grew up in Wuhan. It is said to be an indispensable dish for Wuhan folks during the New Year. I have to make it myself this year. They are crystal clear, round and plump, pleasing to the eyes, symbolizing “family reunion, happiness and perfection”.

6) Eight Treasures

I remember having New Year’s Eve dinner at my grandmother’s house during my youth in Shanghai. There was always a vegan eight-treasure dish, colorful: orange carrots, green spinach, lemon-colored soybean sprouts, black fungus and so on. After coming to the United States, American vegetarians also like this “Buddha’s Feast” all-vegetarian dish.

7) Eight Treasure Rice

Here is a new blog from “Food & Wine” by Danielle Chang:

“Any variety of dried and candied fruits can decorate this lightly sweet sticky rice dessert, but using a lucky assortment of eight is traditional. The Chinese word for the number eight, ba, sounds similar to fa, which means prosperity and confers fortuitous meaning on the dessert. For her Lunar New Year celebration, Lucky Chowproducer Danielle Chang likes to decorate hers with an opulent assortment that includes candied orange peel, goji berries, amarena cherries, kumquats, lemon peel, edible flowers, mandarins, lychees, red dates (jujube), maraschino cherries, gooseberries, kiwi berries, pomegranate, dragon fruit, and sliced figs. Do not substitute sushi or other short-grain rice here; sweet glutinous rice contains a starch that helps the grains stick together without getting mushy.”

It is just perfect to end our New Year’s Eve dinner tonight with this sweet “Eight Treasure Rice”.

Although the pandemic is cruel and merciless, the festive celebrations make us happy. The Lunar New Year suggests that spring is coming, plants are sprouting, and the flowers will be blooming!

Yesterday I found the good messages all about Tiger, they brought me a lot of positive energies!💪💪💪

金牛辭歲金虎到，五虎給你來拜年，犀虎祝你虎年旺，奶虎願你體健康，黃虎為你送事業，水虎給你保平安，犛虎伴你游天下。 虎年吉祥！ 新春福虎送吉祥，金虎進家富滿堂，肥虎祝你壽延長，歲是春作首、虎是百獸王。 虎年到來，祝你虎虎生威、如虎添翼、虎威笙風!

Finally, I ended my blog with the orchestral work Lunar Jamboree I wrote a few years ago. The video clips show the festive atmosphere of our home to celebrate the Chinese New Year 2 years ago: 

Today is the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, the moon is the roundest and brightest, and I am preparing for a special dinner for this Chinese festival. The story of “Chang’e Flying to the Moon” is not only a well-known story in China, it has now spread all over the world. My newlywed niece Huang Leilei (who grew up in UK) also talked to me about Chang’e. She remembered that when she was a child, one of the bedtime stories I told her was the love story between the moon goddess Chang’e and her archer husband Houyi.  Last year she also introduced me the animated movie Over the Moon (released by Netflix) is about a girl named Feifei who built her own rocket and flew to the moon to meet Chang’e.   The pronunciation of Feifei in the movie and my niece Leilei is very similar. My Shanghai-born niece Leilei has a strong interest in the traditional Chinese customs. I heard that tonight she and her newlywed husband are going to her mother’s house to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with her mother (my sister) and her grandma (my mother). They will be eating moon cakes and looking at the moon to commemorate the birthday of her great grandma (my grandma). 

Today is the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (also called Chinese Moon Festival).  It is a very special and memorable day, because my maternal grandmother’s birthday is on Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th in the Chinese lunar calendar. Therefore, on every Mid-Autumn Festival, my mother always reminds us not forget to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday even she’s a no longer with us.

My grandmother’s name is Fang Lan Qing, she was from a scholastic family of “Yumizhixiang” （it means “the land of fertility [geographically and culturally]”)  in southern Anhui. Although she grew up in the feudalistic era of the “Three-inch Golden Lotus Foot Binding” , she was educated and was able to write the beautiful cursive calligraphy.

The name my great-grandfather gave my grandma is profound and poetic. Lan, in Chinese, means Blue; Qing, in Chinese, means Indigo.  There was a Chinese proverb: “Indigo blue is extract from the indigo plant, but is bluer than the plant it comes from”.  It is metaphorical: meaning students are taught by their teachers, but they are better than teachers.  My grandmother was eclectic, blue and indigo. When we were in Shanghai, every Mid-Autumn Festival was always celebrated at our grandmother’s house. On the one hand, it was to celebrate grandma’s birthday, and on the other hand, it was the temptation for a good feast. Festival banquets were always rare in the era of material poverty.  In addition to the sumptuous Mid-Autumn Festival dinner: soy sauced duck, ginger and scallion crab, lotus root short rib soup, etc., adults also drank sweet-scented osmanthus wine and children ate sweet taros and salted edamame.  Eating mooncakes while watching the bright moon is the finale.  My uncle’s family and our family are reunited at grandma’s house almost every Sunday.  But the Moon Festival for my grandmother’s birthday is even more of a joyous festival to wish her a longevity.

Indeed, every holiday season, I miss my family. I remembered the scene of separation when I left Shanghai 35 years ago: I just got a master’s degree in composition at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and immediately I was accepted by UCLA as a PhD candidate in composition.  I wouldn’t miss the good opportunity for furthering my education.  I remember vividly that special day, when I left Shanghai for the United States, my grandmother was already in her late 80s and she was blind. Reluctantly, she was helped by the nanny and tremblingly fumbled the stairs down from the third floor to see me off at the gate.  At that time, China was still very poor. In order to facilitate me to go abroad, my parents’ savings over the years were not enough to buy me a ticket to the United States. Thanks to the help of relatives and friends, I was able to fly to the United States as I wished. Of course I understand that time was my farewell to my grandmother. Seeing grandma’s in tears, I couldn’t help crying like a baby. The airplane ticket was so expensive then. My parents almost bankrupted to purchase me a plane ticket. The first time I returned from the United States to visit my family in China was seven years later.  My grandmother had already left the world by then.

Since I came to the United States, in order to remembered my grandma, I almost celebrated the Moon Festival every year.  Even in the poorest and most lonely days of my school days, I would take a bite of a mooncake to dream the reunion with my family in China.  

The following is the video of Chinese country chef Ziqi Li who makes moon cakes:Ziqi Li is making Chinese Moon Cake.

The following video was about celebrating Chinese Mid-Moon Festival, sung by Mr. Jiang Yuequan and Ms. Zhu Huizhen in 1961. Mr. Jiang was the founder of the famous Pingtan master “Jiang Tunes”.  The characteristics of Pingtan include gentle “wuyu” (a Suzhou dialect) and highly embellished melodies.  It is sung by a vocalist accompanying himself or herself with either a “sanxian” or a “pipa” (both are plucked instruments).  

During my childhood in Shanghai, we shared the kitchen and the bathroom with Mr. Jiang’s family in an alley in the French Concession.   Mr. Jiang’s 3 granddaughters used to be my playmates, now they are among my best friends.

“When did the bright moon first appear?
One raises a cup and asks the blue sky.
One does not know, in the celestial palaces,
what year it is this evening.


I wish to ride the wind and return there,
yet fear the jade towers;
in a high dwelling one cannot bear the cold.
Starting to dance with one's clear shadow -
what else resembles the mortal world?


Revolving around the red pavilion,
lowering to a silk-work door,
it shines upon the sleepless.
It should not have resentment;
why is it always full at times of separation?


People have sorrows, joys, parting and reunions,
the moon is dark, bright, waxes or wanes;
these problems have have been this way since ancient times.
Yet one hopes for longevity;
a thousand miles apart, 
together seeing the moon's beauty.”

The breeze and the moon are free, and it has brought endless imaginations to impoverished Chinese poets of the past dynasties.  How many poems of moon inspired poems are there in the Chinese literature history?  Hundreds and thousand.  One of the most famous poems was written by the Song Dynasty poet Su Shi’s "Shui Diao Ge Tou” (1076).  This poem has been 944 years and passed from one generation to another generation for centuries.  I learned this poem when I was a child, I can still recite it in Chinese by heart:

I found a symphonic work by Qigang Chen (the French modern composer Olivier Messian’s student) on Youtube, the piece was based on this very Su Shi’s we’ll-known poem. 

There is another version of Su Shi’s Shui Diao Ge Tou, a popular song version sung by the Taiwanese pop singer Teresa Teng:

In 1994, my Legend of Chang’e (for violin and marimba), which I was inspired by the Moon Festival, won the first prize in the “1994 Marimolin International Composition Competition”, premiered by the marvelous Sharan Leventhal and Nancy Zeltsman.  

Here’s the description about my piece:

“The Legend of Chang-e is based on an ancient Chinese story which tells about the goddess of the moon named Chang-e. She was the wife of the archer Hou Yi, who had received the elixir of immortality from Xi-wang-mu who was the “Queen Mother” and lived in the legendary Kunlun Mountains. When Hou Yi was away, his wife swallowed the elixir and became immortal. Then she flew to the moon, where she resided in a place called today the “Palace of the Far-reaching Cold”. Hou Yi tried to follow Chang-e, but he failed. Then he took residence in the sun. Until today, every family in China holds reunions on the night of Mid- autumn Festival each year, tasting moon cakes, watching the bright full moon and thinking of Chang-e. 

In this duet, I try to translate the quality and the sense of Chinese music by applying great variety in articulation and dynamics, constant change of instrumental colors, diverse kinds of tone inflections, asymmetrical rhythmic patterns and other imitations of characteristic of Chinese traditional music. In order to describe the dramatic features of the legend, my effort is to make two instruments cast two contrasting images, ——the beautiful and delicate Chang-e (represented by the violin) and the heroic and robust Hou Yi (represented by the marimba). For example, a turmoil with clamorous sounds in section A are suddenly thrust into a peaceful pentatonic melody with an oriental atmosphere in section B. The harmonic language of the piece is based on the vertical collections of the horizontal pentatonic modes. Bi-modality between two instruments is used to create rich textures and complex sonorities. Therefore the simplicity of the horizontal lines contrasts with the complexity of the vertical combinations. “

Later, until I got married in the United States, I had my own home to practice my skills in culinary art.  It is natural to celebrate all Chinese Festivals.  Every Mid-Autumn Festival, we always invited family members, relatives and friends to our home to share the banquets, to watch the moon while eating moon cakes.

This year, the original plan for our Autumn Moon Festival’s was to invite relatives and friends to come to our garden to enjoy the moon and eat mooncakes. Unfortunately, Bill fell ill. I feel like have become the Chang’e in the Moon Palace. Our dog Gigi acts like the Jade Rabbit to accompany me by. my side. I’m spending this special holiday with Bill alone at home, enjoy the happiness and excitement in solitude. The United States is a multi-ethnic country, and the holidays are recurrent one after another, which add a lot of fun in a lengthy “social-distancing” periods. The internet is the “GOD” which connects our emotions with families friends all over the world.

I browsed the Internet casually, for the local availabilities, I chose the “Maya Legend”s recipes and I’m going to vary a little bit.

1) Crab sautéed rice cakes: California’s fat crabs are well-known, and they are definitely not inferior to Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs in China.

2) Cumin lamb chops: Costco sells Australian lamb chops, with cumin and rosemary and other condiments, baked in the oven, the flavor is excellent!



3) Roast duck: I just go to the local “San Woo BBQ” to buy ready-made roast duck, it is Bill’s favorite.

4) Eggplant Braised with TriColored Sweet Peppers: purple Japanese eggplants and sweet peppers are in season in our vegetable garden, with red, green, yellow and sweet.

5) Colorful miscellaneous mushroom soup: a soup made from various mushrooms, and the eyebrows are also lost.

6) “Xinghualou” Mooncakes (which means “Mooncakes from Apricot Blossom Pavilion”) : an exquisitely wrapped box of “Xinghualou” moon cakes was left in front our house by our new Shanghai neighbor Betty. It gave me a sense of nostalgia. “Xinghualou” mooncake is a well known brand in Shanghai with its nearly a hundred years of history. Among the mostly popular varieties, the red bean paste, lotus seed, coconut paste, and five-nuts are mouthwatering choices.

Today is another beautiful day when the moon is full and flowers are blooming. There are abundant varieties of moon cakes displayed in the “99 Supermarket” in Arcadia. Osmanthus flowers are in full bloom, densely thronged, they’re yellow as gold, and the unique fragrant smell brings us a sense of early autumn. Sitting in the garden, a bright and round moon appeared among dense towering palm trees and orange trees in the east. We drank chrysanthemum tea and ate moon cakes facing the moon, as if we saw my beloved grandma, and also saw the images of Chang’e’s elegant dancing, Jade Rabbit’s pounding medicine with a mortal and pestle, Wu Gang’s chopping the osmanthus tree with endless toil on the moon.  These images are all from the folklore I learned when I was child…Autumn Moon is the roundest and brightest…

Lastly, here’s another clip about the family reunion dinner at the Mid-Autumn Festival in the coming movie Over the Moon, I use it to end my blog.