Today Is Powu!

Do you know what date it is? Yes, it’s Feb 16th, but on the Lunar calendar, it’s called Powu, the fifth day of the year.

“Powu” isn’t English; It’s Chinese pinyin and means “break five.” It signals the coming of Spring when farmers would take their ox and plow the fields to break the frozen surface of the fertile Earth. On Powu, the Chinese eat dumplings, which, thinking about it, they seem to eat every day in the Lunar New Year. In North China, Powu dumplings should have meat fillings. An old belief is that by chopping up the meat for stuffing, you chop away any bad luck that might be lurking around your family. Powu is also the birthday of the God of Fortune since getting rich is the Chinese people’s most wanted dream. It’s believed that the god only leaves Heaven once a year, on this day, to visit the Earthly world.

What a long history, and what a long time it would take to make a whole lot of dumplings for the entire family, again!