China’s biggest holiday started on Sunday night as families gathered to celebrate the start of the Spring Festival. The week-long extravaganza stated with Lunar New Year eve dinner which is probably the most sumptuous meal they will have for the holidays.
China Daily gave its readers a peek of what would be common festival food in Shanghai where the menu would vary across millions of households as the nation welcomes The Year of the Fire Monkey.
The main dish would surely include stir-fried shrimp as well as fish since the latter’s pronunciation in Mandarin language means “surplus” – an indicator of a bountiful life in the next 12 months. Veggies would have a lot of garnishing such as nuts and mushroom.
Even if everyone would already be stuffed by the time soup is served at about 8 to 9 p.m., having a taste of the egg dumpling soup is a must because eating it is a form of “borrowing good luck.” The soup is made of egg dumplings shaped like gold ingots, fish, meat, mushroom balls – to represent family unity – and vermicelli for long life.
To cap the dinner, boiled rice dumplings is served as dessert, while firecrackers are exploding and the song “A Night to Remember” is played.
Gothamist, meanwhile, listed several food that are specifically suggested because of the animal of the Chinese zodiac for 2016, the monkey. The food include lettuce because the Cantonese world for this veggie sound like “growing fortune.” It is usually just cooked in boiling water with some oil and oyster sauce added.
Another dish is the Lion’s Head Meatballs made up of four large meatballs browned and simmered in a pot of sauce and bok choy. The meatball’s roundness is a symbol of togetherness and wholeness of the family.
As for dessert, high on the list is Eight Treasure Rice, or Babaofan, made of glutinous rice and bean paste with eight toppings comprising of pistachio, dried apricot, dates, pine nuts, raisins, walnuts, lotus seeds and red dates. This dessert traces its beginnings to Chinese history and folklore.