Traditional Foods for Celebrating Chinese New Year

The current Chinese New Year, which is celebrated for two weeks in February, marks Year 4709 on their calendar, and has been named the Year of the Rabbit. There are hundreds of traditional foods that are considered appropriate for a Chinese family or restaurant dinner celebration.

Generally, the main course of the meal may be fish, chicken, duck or pork. Specifically for the holiday, they are to be served whole. Superstition is that cutting them up to serve may bring the breaking up of the family.

Some historians equate this with the American tradition of bringing an entire turkey to the family dinner table for Thanksgiving. Similarly, serving the main meat, poultry or fish course uncut also celebrates the bounty of the previous year to be enjoyed by family and guests.

The individual types of main courses served at Chinese New Year's dinners have their own meanings. The whole chicken represents happy marriage, and the entire fish on the platter brings the host's wishes for prosperity in the new year.

The side dishes also have their own New Year's pleasantries. Cooked young bamboo shoots and noodles are served to wish guests long life. Egg rolls, whether filled with meats or vegetables, symbolize wealth. Black seaweed and oranges also have the same meaning. Dried bean curd is for happiness, and lychee nuts symbolize the wish for strong and close family ties.

Whole eggs, whether boiled just an hour before dinner or preserved and pickled several years earlier, are meant to wish fertility to newlyweds and young marrieds. The eggs may be served in a bedding of lotus and watermelon seeds, to further wish the fertile family many children.

For the more mature guests at the New Year's celebration dinner, peanuts and garlic chives are served to wish them long and healthy lives.

Because eggs are the symbol of fertility, some contemporary Chinese chefs insist the rabbit is even more fertile. However, although this is the Year of the Rabbit, don't expect too many Chinese restaurants to serve the long-eared forest hopper. It isn't traditional in many areas of China.

Rabbit is included in a traditional dish in Szechuan Province, an area famed for its very spicy foods. The menus there are spicy enough to rival Mexico's, and one speciality is a sort of Asian Mulligan stew. The ingredients include sea scallops, clams, beef , sea bass lips, rabbit meat and lots of little flat pieces of hot black pepper.