Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Popular Chinese New Year Food

By John Chan


Want to know what food they eat in China during New Year's celebrations? Find out what is on the menu during the Chinese New Year season.

Food is an important segment of the (entire|whole) Chinese New Year celebrations as the Chinese people are quite serious about their feeding habits. The Chinese people put the food part of the celebrations on the highest priority level and hence it plays a focal role during the festival unsurprisingly.

The serving of exceptional food that is considered lucky for a time period of two weeks with entering into the New Year and is known as the Festival of Spring or Spring Festival. The reason behind this being that the lunar calendar states that the New Year Season occurs during the spring season and the food served is not at all ordinary.

The cuisine set for the New Year celebrations consists no ordinary food and has some sort of symbolical meaning taggedto it as Chinese people believe in symbolism. A full chicken that is eaten as a must during New Years feasts, represents togetherness of family. All items eaten during this time have some symbolism or the other and are considered to be lucky food.

There is no doubt that the New Year's season's feasting involves the serving of noodles which is a compulsory tradition in China. It is the symbol that assures a long life. The Chinese believe that noodles that are cut bring bad luck so they generally offer uncut noodles.

The Chinese New Year menu also includes clams and spring rolls which entirely exploit the taste buds with exciting taste and symbolizes wealth and prosperity. The bouillon shape of the clams and the gold bar appearance of the spring rolls support this sort of representation.

Another approach to select the right type of food is to focus on the phonetics the word. Take the word 'lettuce', when said in the Chinese language it sounds like the fortune is increasing. The Chinese people use lettuce to wrap fortune food items to be served on the occasion of the New Year.

Some fruits are also designated as fortunate item served during the New Year spring season and its found in abundance at this time of the year. The most important ones are oranges and tangerines. When they are pronounced in Chinese they have the sound of wealth and luck and hence that proves why they are selected. Another fruit type that is selected is the grapefruit as it signifies abundance and is the classic fruit symbol of the New Year.

Fish phonetically sounds like as if someone said wish and thus according to the Chinese people, it symbolizes abundance. As the custom goes, the meal in New Years Eve always finishes with the eating of fish. The fish is served whole to signify togetherness.

Then there is a range of sweet and steamed cakes such as the sticky rice cake and other sweet treats meant to symbolize all the good things that one can and should expect from the year to come.




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