Luck-Telling Dumplings: Special Treat at Tibetan New Year

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It is half serious and half merry-making. Having luck-telling dumplings in Tibet during the local New Year festival is just like taking fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants in the west.

Though luck-telling dumplings are different from fortune cookies in the way they are made, they are all supposed to tell the fortune and luck in future.

While contents of fortune cookies are strips of paper with various phrases on them, those of luck-telling dumplings vary from region to region in Tibet.

White marbles, wool, hot pepper, salt crystals, charcoal, grass and what you name it can be stuffed in the dumplings.

But as a rule, most of the local people aspire to taking dumplings stuffed with signs of the sun, signs of the moon, white marbles, wool, yak dung, salt crystals, roasted barley flour, Buddhist scriptures and flour dough with square holes in the middle.

The sign of the sun means that those who have it will always be very lucky; the sign of the moon means that those who have it will be very bright; white marbles mean that those who have them are honest; wool means that those who have it are as docile as sheep; yak dung means that those who have it often have good luck; salt crystals mean that those who have them are as good and fine as the salt-producing fields in northern Tibet; flour dough with square holes in the middle mean that those who have them have the potential to become Buddhism followers.

On the contrary, most of the local people would not have dumplings stuffed with drums, shattered china, charcoal, hot pepper, rapeseed, core of fruits, Tibetan barley, figures of big-belly men, flour dough made of white flour, human figures with babies on their backs, lazy-bones with crooked necks and grass.

Drums mean that those who have them will cause trouble among friends; shattered china means that those who have it would shun working like hell; charcoal means that those who have it have black hearts; hot pepper means that those who it would often offend others; core of fruits mean that those who have them would be easily drunk; Tibetan barley means that those who have it would easily fall down to transmissible diseases; figures of big-belly men mean that those who have them would have big bellies; human figures with babies on their backs mean that those who have them would have illegitimate offspring; lazy-bones with crooked necks mean that those who have them are terribly lazy; grass means that those who have it would have large stomach but thin throat.

Either good or bad, these omens are only meant to cheer up the festivity of the Tibetan calendar New Year that falls in November in Nyingchi, in January in Xigaze and in February in Lhasa and elsewhere. One does not have to take them seriously.END=OM MANI PADME HUM.( 3 TIMES ).RESEARCH BUDDHIST DHARMA BY BIKKHUNI GESHE TESERING TASHI.VIETNAMESE TIBET,THEREVADA,MAYAHANA,( NUN ).( NHA TRANG ).29/1/2012.