The Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner is the highlight of the Spring Festival and Chinese New Year's Eve every year, not only with a variety of food ingredients, but also with many folk rituals, including people's good wishes for the New Year. When did the Chinese New Year's Eve meal originate? What are the must-have dishes? What are the traditional implications? Dragon vegetables to celebrate the New Year
What is Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner?
Chinese New Year's Eve dinner refers to the dinner on Chinese New Year's Eve and is the most important meal at the end of the year. On this day, people who work outside the home will go home to reunite with their families, so the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is also called "reunion dinner". Traditionally, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is eaten after the family worships their ancestors on Chinese New Year's Eve. In some areas, people have the custom of worshipping gods and ancestors before eating Chinese New Year's Eve, and only after the worship ceremony is completed.
When did the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner originate?
From the twenty-third year of the lunar month, people will start to prepare the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and some families will prepare until Chinese New Year's Eve. In ancient times, people believed that the Chinese New Year's Eve meal also had the effect of chasing epidemics and driving away evil spirits. Therefore, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is a banquet for the whole family, both men and women, young and old. For this reunion, the family or children who went out should return home before Chinese New Year's Eve, and if they did not return in time, a vacant seat should be left on the table for the unreturned person, and a pair of chopsticks should be placed to indicate the family reunion.
What to eat for Chinese New Year's Eve?
For the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, there are different customs and habits in various places, different eating and cooking practices, but they are all people's yearning for a better life in the new year.
1.Eat fish for Chinese New Year's Eve.
Fish is the most common and indispensable ingredient on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table, because it means auspicious, meaning "more than every year", indicating that there is surplus money and surplus food in the new year, and everything is very rich.
2.Chinese New Year's Eve rice to eat rice balls.
Tangyuan is made of glutinous rice kneaded into a round shape (different flavors of filling can be added to it), and then put into a pot to cook, meaning reunion.
3.Chinese New Year's Eve with sweets.
In some areas, sweets are served as the last dish of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, wishing the days to come sweet.
4.Eat dumplings for Chinese New Year's Eve.
Northerners are accustomed to eating dumplings during the New Year, which means "changing the age of the old and the new". And because the white-flour dumplings are shaped like silver ingots, a pot is served on the table to symbolize the meaning of "making a fortune in the New Year, and the wealth is rolling". In some areas, people will also wrap a few coins in them when making dumplings, and those who eat coin dumplings will be extra lucky in the coming year.
5.Eat noodles for Chinese New Year's Eve.
In some areas, noodles must be one or more long noodles, and a bowl of long noodles represents the hope that the family can live a long life.
6.Chinese New Year's Eve dinner hot pot.
Hot pot is also a dish that is popular all over the country, hot pot is not only rich and delicious, the method is simple, the hot pot is boiling, steaming, meaning that the coming year is prosperous.
Depending on the region and ethnicity, the ingredients of Chinese New Year's Eve rice are also different, and the dishes and cooking methods are also different. Guangxi Zhuang people like to eat sweets, which means that the new year is a good and sweet life. Fujian Hokkien people eat noodles, meaning "every year", and Zhangzhou eats sausages, Songhua eggs and ginger, which means "the days are getting more and more prosperous". Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places should eat celery, leeks, bamboo shoots, etc. In Anhui and other places, everyone should take a bite of raw radish, which is called "bite spring", which can "remove bacteria and prevent diseases, and the New Year is auspicious". In some places in Guanzhong and Henan, dumplings and noodles are cooked together, which is called "gold wire wearing ingots" and "silver thread hanging gourd".