Venue: Brand Hall @ Faith United Methodist Church, 899 Dorset Street, South Burlington, VT 05403
Date: Saturday January 24, 2026
Time: 2:00 - 4:30pm
Cost: $40
Vermont Chinese School is running a special cooking class, "Cooking for the Chinese New Year", to celebrate the upcoming Lunar New Year. We'll be making jiaozi and sesame balls, a cooking demonstration and sampling of nian gao, and we will have an opportunity to learn the basic traditional paper cutting.
Jiaozi 饺子 is a type of Chinese dumpling. They are folded to resemble Chinese sycee and have great cultural significance in China. Jiaozi is one of the major dishes eaten during the Chinese New Year throughout northern China and is eaten year-round in the northern provinces. Jiaozi is popular in other parts of East Asia and in the Western world, where a fried variety is known as potstickers.
Sesame balls 蔴球 are a type of fried Chinese pastry made from glutinous rice flour. The pastry is coated with sesame seeds on the outside, and is crisp and chewy after cooking. Sesame balls are traditionally filled with a bit of sweet red bean paste. The sweetness in the sesame balls symbolizes happiness. Their round shape and golden color are considered lucky, and the fact that the dough balls swell as they’re fried and increase several times in size is a happy metaphor for a small venture growing and bringing back a large return. Sesame balls are commonly seen as a New Year snack in the Canton region, Hong Kong and Macau.
Nian gao 年糕 sometimes translated as year cake or New Year cake or Chinese New Year's cake, is a food prepared from glutinous rice flour. It is also simply known as "rice cake". While it can be eaten year-round, it is most popular during the Chinese New Year. It is considered good luck to eat nian gao during this time of the year because nian gao is a homonym for "higher year" or "grow every year" (年高), which means "a more prosperous year".
Please email vtchineseschool@gmail.com to sign up. Payment must be prepaid via Venmo or PayPal:
Venmo: @Vermont_Chinese_School (last 4 digits of phone # 6332)
PayPal: vtchineseschool@gmail.com
The deadline for class registration is January 17th.
