Food - Chinese New Year
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Chinese New Year cuisine is often intriguing, not to mention full of symbolic meaning. Check out these key foods that are meant to bring joy, luck, wealth and prosperity to the Chinese.
Fruits of gold
Etiquette dictates a gift of ‘gold’ in the form of mandarins, oranges or tangerines when visiting family or friends during Chinese New Year. Fruit with leaves symbolises that one's relationship with the other remains secure, and for newlyweds, this represents the couple's branching into a family with children.
'Jai' 齋 and whole chickens
On New Year's Day, families eat a super-symbolic vegetarian dish called ‘jai’ which is made of some of the following ingredients:
- Lotus seed = having many sons
- Ginkgo nut = like silver ingots
- Black moss seaweed = great wealth
- Dried bean curd = wealth and happiness
- Bamboo shoots = sounds like "wishing that everything would be well".
Fresh bean curd or tofu is not included as a New Year’s ingredient as the colour white is traditionally associated with death and funerals for the Chinese.
Other foods that get eaten include dishes of whole fish (to represent togetherness and abundance) and whole chicken (yes, head and feet stay on the platter!) for prosperity and completeness. Noodles should be uncut, as they represent long life.
In south China, favourite dishes are ‘nian gao’, sweet steamed glutinous rice pudding and ‘zong zi’ (glutinous rice wrapped up in reed leaves).
In the north, steamed-wheat bread (‘man tou’) and small meat dumplings are preferred.
The tremendous amount of food prepared at this time of the year is to symbolise abundance and wealth for the household.
The Tray of Togetherness 全 盒
This is a circular or octagonal (eight is a very lucky number for the Chinese, as you may know) tray with dazzling array of candy to start the New Year… sweetly.
Each candy represents some kind of good fortune:
- Candied melon = growth and good health
- Red melon seed = dyed red to symbolise joy, truth and sincerity
- Lychee nut = strong family relationships
- Kumquat = prosperity (gold)
- Coconut = togetherness
- Peanuts = long life
- Longan = many sons (thank goodness for modern times, eh, ladies?)
- Lotus seed = many children
Check out Wikipedia’s article on Chinese New Year cuisine.
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