Preparing and sharing a pot of Tibetan guthuk ahead of Losar, the New Year celebration, helps banish the bad from the past year.
Growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, Tenzin Yeshi loved the buzz of excitement as Losar, the New Year celebration, approached in her Tibetan community. Ms. Yeshi recalls how nomadic traders, clad in heavy wool coats, would start gathering around one of the city’s largest stupas, or Buddhist monuments, to sell yak meat.
“It was one of those little signs that made you know Losar was coming,” she said.
Some of that meat would be destined for guthuk, a nourishing soup that anchors Nyi-shu-gu, the 29th day of the 12th month of the Tibetan calendar. The occasion, which falls on Monday this year, is a moment to gather for dinners and to cleanse the home, body and spirit in the lead-up to Losar, the largely Buddhist celebration observed across the Himalayas and their diaspora, with exact dates varying among ethnic groups and regions.
An especially large reset is in order. This Losar concludes the Year of the Wood Snake, a period considered so inauspicious that some couples postponed weddings, and ushers in the Year of the Fire Horse, a more hopeful era of energy and transformation.
Tenzin Yeshi remembers how nomadic traders, clad in heavy wool coats, would sell yak meat that featured in guthik.Credit…Celeste Noche for The New York Times
Ms. Yeshi, who goes by Kyikyi, is preparing for the new year in Beaverton, Ore., where she lives and runs Himalayan Dumplings and where she makes guthuk each Nyi-shu-gu.
With its base of handmade noodles, vegetables and morsels of meat in a savory broth, it’s an easily adaptable Tibetan noodle soup, or thukpa. Whatever the ingredients, there must be at least nine: “Gu” means nine, an auspicious number and a nod to Nyi-shu-gu, and “thuk” is noodles.
Dinners begin with a game. A large dumpling bobbing in each serving hides tokens or notes offering fortunes or judgments.
Lobsang Wangdu, the author of “Tibetan Home Cooking,” said he and his siblings would tease one another when a dumpling would reveal a bad fate, like a lump of coal (labeling you dark-hearted), a piece of rock salt (lazy) or a chile (feisty).
Now living in the Bay Area, Mr. Wangdu instead tucks papers with the fates scribbled on them into his dumplings. “In Tibet, we would put all kinds of stuff in the balls,” he said with a laugh. “It’s kind of dangerous, I’m realizing.”
Tenzin Yiga, a junior at Harvard University and president of its Undergraduate Tibetan Cultural Association, plans to make a big batch of vegetarian guthuk for the group’s celebration. She chooses to see the dumplings’ messages as guidance. “If it says I’m lazy, it’s time to get motivated,” she said. “It’s time to lock in.”
Fortunes or judgments are written on notecards to tuck into dumplings.Credit…Celeste Noche for The New York Times
The dumplings holding the cards aren’t meant to be eaten; they’re simply opened to reveal the messages inside.Credit…Celeste Noche for The New York Times
The dinners traditionally culminate with a formal banishing of negativity in the form of a little dough statue — an effigy of flour and water — known as the lue. Its shape varies: Some look like blobby snowmen. Others resemble unpopular political figures. When the meal is almost over, everyone pours their last drops of guthuk at the lue’s feet. Then, they pass around more dough balls, known as pagchi or dri lue, to press against ailing body parts.
In Oregon, Ms. Yeshi’s mother-in-law presses her pagchi against where her arthritis has been troubling her, before adding it to the lue’s plate. “Essentially we’re saying, ‘Please take this away with the lue,’” Ms. Yeshi said.
When it’s time to officially evict the lue, someone carries it out of the house. It’s essential that the bearer never look back so any misfortunes and evil spirits won’t be able to return. They then walk to the nearest intersection and leave the lue, along with all the year’s burdens. Only when that’s done, Ms. Yeshi said, can the family prepare to celebrate Losar.
“Now you’ve made a new space — environmentally, spiritually and physically — for the New Year and a new beginning.”
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