Ginger Vinegar

Each culture has its own set of beliefs, superstitions, traditions and practice of doing things.
If you have just had a baby, the Chinese believe that you shouldn't go out for 40 days and the mother shouldn't use running water to bathe. For people from Hong Kong, it is traditional to boil ginger, vinegar, egg, pigs trotters together to form a sweet but spicy and vinegary soup that is suposed to be really good for the mother. If you go to visit the baby, they you will be given this to eat.  It's kind of strange, but incredibily warming.

Actually, I don't recollect eating this much. Just the once when we went to Noel's house in HK and we got to eat this. I loved it so much. And, one time I went 'yumcha' with my grandma and saw it was avaliable and I think that we ordered it. My grandma was telling me how to make it.

I wonder what other cultures do and eat after the baby is born. I know from a few Kurdish friends, that they will make a sweet walnut paste for the mother to eat (I tried it at the hospital!) which was quite nice. another friend from Afghanistan said that the mother should eat 'hot' things. We were making a dish with saffron and apparently that's very good. Funny how there is nothing unique about having babies, yet people have such different beliefs about how to go about it!