vkeong loves good food, travel and photography!
Archive for March, 2007
Penang Chinese New Year Street Festival I
Mar 3rd
[tag]Penang[/tag] [tag]Chinese New Year[/tag] [tag]Street Festival[/tag] 2007 was held last weekend on the 24th of February. 6 streets were identified as the main locations for various activities and performances. The selected streets were Lebuh Chulia, Lebuh Ah Quee, Lorong Soo Hong, Lebuh Armenian and Lebuh Cannon. I didn’t know about this festival at all until SL forwarded me the mail she received from her colleague. Seeing that this is only held annually, we decided to take part in the celebration.
The streets were already closed to traffic at 3pm and the first thing we saw from far was Penang’s [tag]Wings Of Dreams[/tag]. Wings Of Dreams is the overall winner at Flora Fest parade which was held in Putrajaya a month ago. It’s a beautiful [tag]float[/tag] alright, really deserved the win.
Then there was a display of 12 Chinese zodiac animals in the middle of the street in lantern form. They are the creation of a local artist which won him the competition.
This year is the year of the golden boar. In case you didn’t know, I am borned in the year of pig (1983) 
Dragon is my father’s chinese zodiac, which I find is the nicest among all lanterns.
The main entrance is a gigantic gate resembling the entrance to villages in China. It is so big you can spot it a few streets away.
There were 13 stages for performances throughout the festival and this is the main stage. Before the festival started, some acrobat performers from China entertained the crowd with their amazing display of skills. The performers are a collaboration with another lantern festival in Tapak Pesta Sungai Nibong which will be held until April. The stage is empty in the photo because I was there very early, at 3.30pm.
Then we walked around for a bit to snap some random photos. The street festival is a combination of cultural performaces of different villages as in Hakka, Hokkien, Hainan etc. The agenda is not fixed, you can visit any village you like at anytime if the ongoing program interests you. And provided if you could stand squeezing through the crowd to get there too lol.
Hainan village, our chicken rice comes from here lol.
In Clan Village, you can learn more about your surname and its origin in China. There was a huge map of China indicating which surname originated from which region. Quite informative I would say but I wasn’t really interested Anyway, more photos to share in the next post, stay tuned!
Muar Chee
Mar 2nd
[tag]Muar Chee[/tag] can be considered more of a snack. It is made of steamed glutinous rice served with ground peanuts, sugar and sometimes sesame seeds. When I was a small kid, father used to buy a big packet for merely RM1 and the whole family will enjoy it as a dessert after dinner.
Now I can hardly find muar chee in Bukit Mertajam. In fact, I don’t remember seeing anyone selling it at all! There are more stalls selling muar chee in [tag]Penang[/tag] island and you can usually find them whenever in night markets. Or you can try Gurney Drive or Northam Beach Cafe. Basically they all taste the same, just different in the price. The preparation of muar chee is simple enough. The preparer takes out a strip of steamed glutinous rice and put it in a container full of ground peanuts and sugar. Then the strips are cut into pieces. For the muar chee to taste better, there’s actually a very simple trick. Simply cut the muar chee into smaller pieces so that more peanuts can stick. If you have eaten muar chee before, you know that the smaller pieces taste nicer, right? 
Over the years, muar chee has evolved. It no longer comes in plain flavored glutinous rice. Now there are pandan, sweet corn, black sesame and many other flavors. I remember having a plate of mixed muar chee in Northam Beach Cafe which only costed RM2.50 and it was really good. As you can see, muar chee is eaten using toothpick, quite a unique food don’t you think so 
