It's time to ring in the Chinese New Year -- this one, the Year of the Sheep, begins Saturday. But with Valentine's Day around the corner, the celebration calls for . . . dim sum, a meal with heart and imagination.

Depending upon which translation you choose, dim sum means ''touch of your heart'' or ''pointing to your heart's desire'' in Cantonese.

Some of us are fools for words, so I eagerly shared this discovery with a colleague of Chinese descent .

''To me, it just means time to pig out!'' she said, pointing the way to one of her favorite local dim sum destinations, Sang's Chinese Restaurant in North Miami Beach.

Sang's has been around for 13 years, since owners Purwan and Irene Cheung moved to Florida for the climate. He had been a chef in a restaurant in New York's Chinatown, she a waitress.

You know you're in for an authentic -- if adventurous -- experience when you enter the modest storefront on Northeast 163rd Street and find that nearly all the patrons are Chinese -- and are conversing in Cantonese in the casual, rapid-fire way in which many in South Florida speak Spanish.

The waitresses speak English, but unless you're very familiar with Chinese cuisine, their pronunciations will ring unfamiliar and the choices on the dim sum menu will seem daunting.

In dim sum, a potpourri of snack-sized specialties are brought to your table. You think you're eating light, but beware. Unless you invite along an expert or a repeat customer who can guide you through the listings, you'll stumble like we did -- and end up with a heck of a lot of shrimp (albeit, diverse in preparation).

Sang's serves dim sum from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Because it is relatively small, the restaurant doesn't serve the dim sum in carts, as is the custom in Hong Kong and elsewhere. At Sang's, some of the dishes arrive in the bamboo casseroles in which they are steamed.

If you invest time and make your selections as you go along instead of in one huge sweep, you're more likely to make informed choices and enjoy a wide range of flavors and preparations. Depending on how busy the restaurant is, dishes arrive within 10 to 15 minutes of ordering.

Start with a cup of hot tea -- it's part of the ritual. Then, the most basic item: the har gow ($2.25), steamed shrimp dumplings touched with shreds of ginger and wrapped in a rice noodle.

Shrimp balls ($2) are shrimp wrapped in fried wonton strips, a favorite with kids, as is the deep-fried taro with shrimp ($2), which looks like skinny french fries glued to shrimp. The fried shrimp mango rolls ($2.25) are also worth sampling for the slightly sweet kick.

If you're not eating shrimp, you're likely getting pork. Not to be missed are the baked barbecue pork buns ($1.70) with a delicious sweet glaze on top.

But the most striking dish is the sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves ($2). The white rice is nicely stuffed with bits of pork, sausage and mushrooms.

Siu mai ($2) combines the tastes of ground pork, minced mushrooms and shrimp dumpling, and like the har gow is also steamed.

For a change of texture, try the stuffed, fried bean curd ($1.70) -- tofu filled with ground shrimp.

All of the fare was good and inexpensive but a little greasy, and the shrimp wasn't all deveined.

Of the 10 people who ended up sampling our excessive order at the restaurant or from the take-home stash, we had only one complaint: a bit of bone or something hard in a dumpling.

Our own faux pas: We forgot to order dessert, a first in our frequent food forays. Blame it on our overload of ''little morsels for the heart,'' as one Chinese chef calls dim sum.

No matter what you call it, if you surrender to the adventure and desire, dim sum is a hearty way to ring in the New Year and a sweet prelude to Valentine's Day.