Hosting a Community Dinner: Chinese New Year Hot Pot

I just love hosting Community Building events, especially with others for support. With a common interest, people from drastically different walks of life can really enjoy each other's company. With a little bit of creativity, patience, and intuition everyone is left feeling welcome.

Hot Pot is one of my favourite communal meals to share with friends. I love the flavours of the ingredients, the dipping sauce and the crowding around the pot. It's also versatile since you can change your broth as well as your ingredients.

Who do you invite and how do you get the ingredients? Well, I guess that depends on if you are doing it with a set group - say a work party - or if you are trying to help friends meet new friends and build community. So a set group is easy - pick a date that works for everyone. For the other, you need to decide on who gets to give invitations - namely the host(s) and yourself.

What is your strategy?
For the three times I've done it with roommates:

• Determine the event type and motivation: hot pot for new years, for friends far from home
• Determine the group size: the capacity of our apartment when everyone is sitting
• Divide the max number of people by 3 and invite that number of friends: 3-4 each
• Determine which type of friends would enjoy this type of event and might cross-over with other friend groups: Among our Asian friends from out of town, there was a group who play badminton (roommate 1+2) and/or attend med-school and/or attended our church (roommate 1+2) - so we focused on those three groups.
• Share an inspiring invitation to said friends and see who can come: we had to invite more people as we started to receive replies. We wanted to maintain the integrity of the group by keeping within the three interest groups, as well as maintaining a fairly even gender balance.
• Keep inviting until the max number of friends will be in attendance: our max was 12 guests
• Commit to providing the main or majority of the food to invest in our guests: once we did a potluck and divided the ingredients throughout the invited guests
• Create a warm and welcoming environment where everyone feels welcome: welcome everyone by name, ask them about collective interests established ahead of time, and help friends with shared interests to sit together.

As roommates, we each used our strengths and gifts to help everyone feel welcomed and included. Every group dinner had different needs and dynamics.

What ingredients do you need?
Each group has different dietary needs (vegetarian, vegan, pescetarian), and different foods which are significant in their culture or family. Here's what I used for one group:

• cobs of corn
• assorted fish balls
• 3 packs of beef and lamb
• winter melon
• enoki, oyster, and button mushrooms
• assorted fried tofu, stuffed tofu
• watercress, bok choi, cabbage
• yam noodles, udon noodles
• beef balls
• dumplings (some can be vegetarian to help them have something substantial)
• sauces: soy, black vinegar, sesame oil, sesame paste, cilantro, garlic, bbq sauce, eggs
• dessert
• drinks (always aloe drink and others)

What is the significance?
When I have been taught how to do Hot Pot, I was told that you start with meat because it adds flavour, then vegetables because they can cook longer, and then the starch because they can't stay in the broth for too long. Each ingredient has an original meaning and every family does it a little differently. Here's an interesting post from Centre for Asian American Media on Family Tradition surrounding Hot Pot

A few years ago, I looked into the significance of each item in a New Years Hot Pot meal, but all that I remember is that long noodles (or strings) represent long life - which everyone wants as they step into a new year! Here's a post which talks about the significance of 12 foods included in Hot Pot.

I find it a great time to learn about others' traditions and culture. I learned a lot from my friends and roommates as we've planned these meals together. Each person has different ingredients which are their favourite. Beyond the ingredients, here's an interesting list of 21 Things You Didn't Know about Lunar New Year.


How do you and your roommates create a community for others?