IPOH: Having spent 24 years teaching in vernacular secondary school SMJK Poi Lam, the school has a special spot in Roziah @ Nariah Yahaya’s heart.

Hence, she is more than happy to accept a request from school principal Oh Eng Hwa to prepare halal yee sang for the school again, even though she retired last year.

When she received a call from Oh asking whether she would help prepare the halal yee sang, Roziah did not have second thought.

“I would like to celebrate Chinese New Year in the school again,” said Roziah, the former head of Malay subject in the school in Ipoh, Perak.

Unlike last year, she prepared the dish all by herself, right from buying ingredients, shredding various types of vegetables and preparing different sauces to go with the dish.

Roziah was busy cutting the vegetables till midnight, then woke up at 5.30 am to complete the chores. She managed to bring four big plates of yee sang to school at 7.30 am.

She did not mind preparing the auspicious dish alone so that the other teachers could enjoy the students’ performance in the school.

Roziah, head of the school’s halal food committee, prepared halal yee sang with several Muslim teachers for Chinese New Year celebration last year.

The Muslim teachers bought the ingredients and prepared the dish in school, and because of that they missed the Chinese New Year performances presented by the students.

Prior to this, Muslim teachers joined their Chinese and Indian colleagues tossing yee sang with auspicious phrases such as Huat Ah! Ong Ah! (prosperity) but they opted to stay away from the dish.

Oh observed that Muslim teachers only had mandarin oranges but not yee sang, a Chinese raw fish salad popular among the Chinese in Malaysia during Chinese New Year.

Yee sang usually consists of strips of raw fish (typically salmon), mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments.

The recipe generally includes ingredients such as shredded radish and carrots, ginger slices, onion slices, crushed peanuts, pomelo, pepper, essence of chicken, oil, salt, vinegar, sugar and more.

Yee sang means “raw fish” where the pronunciation of fish is similar with Chinese word “abundance”.

Hence, yee sang is interpreted as “increase in abundance” while the gesture of tossing yee sang collectively with chopsticks is a symbolic act of representing the wish for prosperity, abundance and good fortune in the coming year, especially during Chinese New Year.

Oh mooted the idea of inviting Roziah to prepare yee sang as she is good at cooking and she used to bring home-cooked dishes to share with her colleagues at school, even after her retirement.

“Roziah’s yee sang is special and delicious,” said Oh.

Roziah’s yee sang has cucumber, pomelo, mango, carrot, lettuce, purple cabbage and sengkuang, and she uses plum sauce, Thai chilli, olive oil, sesame oil, fish sauce and honey to make the sauce.

She replaces raw fish with peanut, prawn crackers and murukku.

Oh said more than half of the 115 teachers in Poi Lam are Malays, and the school has separate sets of ovens and air fryers to cater to the needs of Muslim and non-Muslim teachers.

“I will continue to ask Roziah to prepare yee sang next year, probably until I retire,” quipped Oh.