Shang Palace – Celebrate Chinese New Year the Fun Way at Makati Shang!
When in Manila, do you know where you will be celebrating Chinese New Year yet?
Let me just start by saying that no, I am not Chinese. However, I love celebrating Chinese New Year like most other Filipinos out there for various reasons.
Reason Number One: Chinese New Year is a chance to start over… again.
Despite having just gone through New Year’s Eve pretty recently, I feel like Chinese New Year is a fresh start. On New Year’s Eve, we all make these resolutions that we promise to keep; but, more often than not, we end up disappointing ourselves when we break them just two weeks into the new year. (Am I right or am I right?) Chinese New Year gives us that second chance to prove ourselves wrong and try to renew and keep those resolutions all over again.
The best part is that there is a super fun way to do this at Shang Palace in Makati Shang: through the prosperity toss (or yee sang, as the Chinese call it).
In a nutshell, yee sang refers to a salad that consists of different vegetables, sauces and condiments, all of which are meant to symbolise different things, such as wealth, health, abundance, luck and prosperity. Before the prosperity toss “ceremony”, all of these ingredients are mixed together by the chef as he explains what each ingredient stands for.
Everyone got really excited when he mentioned wealth. :p
After that is when the fun begins…
The salad is placed in the middle of the table…
Everybody starts thinking about what they want to wish for come new year…
And as they shout out their hopes, dreams and wishes for the new year, they use their chopsticks to toss the salad in the air!
Apparently, the higher you toss your food, the higher the chances are that your wishes for the new year will come true!
As you can see, our table took the prosperity toss very seriously.
That’s mostly because we didn’t know we’d end up eating the salad after we made a mess, though. :p
It was actually my first time to do the yee sang, and I must say I had a ton of fun. I spent most of it giggling and screaming for more money in my life (in my head, not aloud! :p) and although we all had food on our arms afterwards, there wasn’t a single soul in Shang Palace that didn’t have a smile on his or her face. 🙂 Definitely an experience that I will remember and talk about for a long time to come!
Reason Number Two: Chinese food is downright delicious.
That’s right. The lunch that came afterwards was one to be remembered and talked about, as well. Click on the next page to see what we had after we had our messy Salmon Fish Yu Sheng…
