The Meaning of Food in the Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is one of the most important dates in the Lunar calendar. The celebrations this year last from New Year’s Eve on February 13 until the Lantern Festival on the 15th day. Food plays a particularly important role during this time of family gatherings, when dinner tables are laden with all kinds of auspicious foods with symbolic meanings or names that suggest fortune, happiness, longevity and prosperity.
The culinary celebrations start off with the “Family Reunion Dinner” on New Year's Eve. Typical main courses are fish, chicken or duck, which promise abundance and prosperity. They are always served as a whole, with head and tail included, because the chopping up of foods is considered unlucky. Furthermore, fish balls and meat balls are served, as they imply “reunion” and their round shape portrays “togetherness”. Long, uncut noodles are used to guarantee that all at the table will have a long life. Indispensable are the New Year’s cake (nian gao), a sweet sticky rice pudding cake that is said to make people "advance toward higher positions and prosperity", and dumplings (jiao zi). Dumplings look like the golden ingots yuan bao used during the Ming Dynasty for money and the name sounds like the word for the earliest paper money. Hence, having them on New Year’s Eve brings the promise of wealth and prosperity in the new year.

The first day of the Chinese New Year typically starts with a vegetarian meal, meant to garner good karma by refraining from killing animals. Auspicious vegetables eaten on this day include lettuce (“growing wealth”), Chinese cabbage (“growth of all living things”), bamboo shoots (“growth in status and good business”) and soybean sprouts. Tofu is not included as it is white and unlucky for New Year as the color signifies death and misfortune. During the ensuing days of the New Year month, meals typically include more auspicious ingredients such as dried oysters ("wealth and good business") and seaweed (“prosperity”). In many homes, a platter with five dishes is served, either meat or vegetables, called "the five blessings of the new year," referring to longevity, riches, peace, wisdom and virtue. Throughout the festival, it is customary for people to offer tangerines and oranges as New Year gifts, as their Chinese names sound like "gold" and "wealth".

Whether or not one shares the original Chinese culinary beliefs, the New Year’s celebrations might be the perfect opportunity to venture into Chinese cuisine. Chiang Mai visitors and residents will have ample opportunity to so at the city’s Chinese restaurants and in ‘Chinatown’ around Warorot Market, especially from February 13-15.