Spring egg rituals shared

By Betty Lin

PAUL and Paula King, enthusiastically egged on by adopted Chinese daughters Esther, 10, and Abigail, 8, and friends, dyed eggs, staged egg hunts and presented coloured eggs to their neighbours on March 23, Easter Sunday.

The couple took with them an egg colouring kit when they came to Zhuhai a year ago. They celebrated Eater Sunday last year in Zhuhai and this year, they decided to combine the colouring and the party so that Chinese friends would have a clear idea of how to dye the hard-boiled eggs.

Abby was puzzled by the egg colouring and hunt when she took part for the first time at age 3, but she has become immensely interested in the celebration ever since, Paula explained.

Paula had boiled about 60 eggs the night before. With the dyes, bowls, spoons and metal egg dipper, the colouring began Sunday noon on their balcony. The kit contains six pure food tablets coloured red, green, orange, yellow, purple and blue; 29 Easter stickers, three egg wrappers, one egg dipper, eight egg holders and nine silly circles. Paula put one tablet in a bowl, adding two tablespoons of vinegar and a cup of water, to make one colour.

To make ultra vibrant coloured eggs, one can also add three tablespoons of vinegar to a tablet; to make traditional coloured eggs, three tablespoons of lemon juice can be added; whereas to make pastel colours, add three tablespoons of water and once the tablet dissolves, add a half cup of water and stir gently, according to the instructions.

For an artistic effect, wrap the boiled egg in a plastic mould carved with stars, animals and so on and colour the stencils using felt-tip pens. The eggs can also be speckled with crayons or glittered with stickers. Then one can place the egg on a bent egg dipper and bathe it in colour. The longer the egg stays in the bath, the darker the shade. One can also dip half the egg in a colour bath and the other half in another, or darken the first and half and lighten the rest for a rainbow affect of. The dyed eggs will be removed to a tray to let dry.

Children love to dye eggs, as it sparks their imaginations, Paula said. Christian American families dye eggs at Easter every year and take it as great fun, she added.

When most of the eggs were dyed, Esther and Abby put them into a basket and took it downstairs for the egg hunt. Some senior citizens were in the residential garden for chitchat and some held their grandchildren. They showed great curiosity toward the colourful eggs.

“What is it? Eggs?” an aged woman asked. Paula explained to her in Chinese: “Keyi chi” -- meaning “eatable”. The grandmas formed a circle and each took an egg from the basket, peering carefully. “They look pretty,” one said.

When Abby tried to give an egg to a seemingly 3-year-old girl on a swing, the child hesitated and turned toward her dad. She would not take it even with constant encouragement from her dad, who eventually accepted one for her.

Young girls in the neighbourhood soon gathered for the egg hunt. Esther and Abby placed the eggs beneath the wooden bench, on the grass and among the plants, and the Chinese girls found them almost immediately. A 9-year-old girl named Qiu Jinru found most of the eggs, which were kept in her skirt, while other kids only found three or four in total.

Then another round of egg hunt began. The Chinese girls hid the eggs below the balcony, beneath the leaves and behind the trees, making it more difficult for Esther and Abby to find. It indeed took the two girls quite some time hunting the eggs.

Paula communicated with her neighbours in simple Chinese and sincere smile while Paul was busy taking photos of the neighbours. “She has made a lot of progress in speaking Chinese,” one of her neighbours commented. “She is very kind and the family is very nice,” another neighbour said.

“I like the game. It’s fun,” Qiu said. However, she said her mother told her not to eat the eggs. Meanwhile, Liang Yanting, a 10-year-old primary school student, said she took part in the game last year and she would eat it. “It’s eatable,” she said.

An elderly woman also said she would never eat the egg. “It’s good to look at but we’d rather not eat it,” she said, adding: “There might be no harm, but who knows?”