It's February 14, 2010. Valentines Day and Chinese New Year happens to fall on the same day this year. To celebrate, I'm making a special - decievingly complicated provincial brined chicken with a ginger and scallion slaw. It's both traditional and our favorite since our first taste of unadulerated Chinese food in New York City.

New Year in Sheboygan is such a non-event. There is only a spritz (not even a sprinkle) of Chinese and Vietnamese people in this town. We know that the other exists through our connection at the Hmong Union Asian Supermarket. The Union market is the glue that bonds all eastern Asians within a 50 mile radius of here. It's a mystery to the store owner and I where these rare Chinese people reside though. They've only been sighted in the back kitchens of the Chinese buffet and to-go restaurants and a couple of the Thai restaurants restaurants around town. We suspect they live further north towards Manitowoc and Greenbay. On a day like today, I miss the buzz of people in the market shopping for prized flowers, fruits, vegetables and meats for the big feasting and celebration at home. I use to complain about the chaos found in Asian communities. Now, I feel lonely without its homely familiarity.

Kaolin celebrates her 17th month birthday today. The plan originally was to go all out with the traditional fare but the week got in the way. With two trials less than 6 weeks away, I felt a bit obligated to head to the office for a few hours this morning. But ofcourse, I didn't have my cell phone so I couldn't call my boss to figure out the new passcode to the office door and after the third try, was totally locked out of the key pad entirely. Maybe Grandma was telling me that I should really be enjoying this important spiritual day of my ancestor's with my new family. So backwards I went on my trail to the supermarket for plump chicken, spices and a bottle of Cakebread wine for honey. Inspiration got the best of me so I ran to the Union market and found a package of red envelope and a plate of sugar cured coconut candy to go along with the rare kamkuates that was on sale at Walmart.

I couldn't help but get teary eyed on my ride back and forth between stores. The more authentic ingredients I was able to obtain, the more old forgotten pieces of New Year and my childhood was resurrected. The day's homesickness started with an episode of Anthony Bourdaine's travel through Los Angeles' Thai town. For the first time in my life, I missed being surrounded and lost in a sea of Asian Americans. For better or for worst, I want to relate with my ethnic peers again. Times have changed and we have become our own people in the United States. I am now a mother, a professional and a part Asian - part American woman. The period of identity crisis from a decade ago is come and gone and today, we look at each other with a sense of knowing and with less likelihood of judgment. We are grown up now and I want to share the better part of the coming experiences with my familiar, those who can laugh at the inside jokes.

I know only 3 sets of Chinese people in Sheboygan. A distant Kohler colleague of Clay's in the marketing department, a Kohler engineer and his wife-kids-mother who live down the street, and the Thai-Chinese woman who runs the Thai Cafe. I discovered for the first time that she is in fact 100% Chinese except that she grew up in Thailand. Her husband is American and she also has lost touch with New Year celebration primarily because she has no other family nearby to celebrate the tradition with. To cheer each other up, we wished each other happy New Year in our familiar language and for a second, was standing on the footsteps of our mother's and grandmother's kitchen door way, smelling boiled brined chicken and hearing the clangs of women working for hours over pots of gastronomical delights.

So Gung Hai Fat Choi and San Lien Fai Loc from Sheboygan.