Cynthia Cheng Mintz

Most people know about the basics of Chinese New Year.  That it’s bigger than Christmas, each year is represented by an animal (this year, it’s the rabbit) people get lai see money in red envelopes and that it lasts for several days.   As Chinese culture is very much about  food, so naturally, there’s even more food when one celebrates the New Year.  And considering that the celebration was historically two weeks long, it’s one heck of an eating fest.  It all starts on New Year’s Eve with a big meal.  This dinner may include shrimp, fish, pork as well as abolone and lobsters.  Restaurants, at least in Toronto, are often very busy as people don’t always have the time to cook.  Some restaurants actually only offer prix fixe menus on New Year’s Eve as they’re too busy to deal with a la carte. 

Throughout the two weeks of celebration, each day represents or honours something different.  If it is something that one might eat, the flesh is not consummed that day.  Chicken, for example, is not eaten on New Year’s Day.  In addition, many families do not eat meats at all – a good thing, perhaps, to cleanse after the huge New Year’s Eve meal.  The second day of New Year is also celebrated by a big meal (hoi neen). In addition, long noodles are often eaten on the seventh day, signifying a long and prosperous life.

Pan fried neen gao, Cantonese style

One very sigificant dish is neen gao or “New Year Cake” (neen gao) and turnip cake (law bak gao).  The word “gao” which in this case means cake is a homonym to the word for tall.  So neen gao means “tall year” or more accudrately, a prosperous year.  As with many other countries, different regions of China make neen gao in a variety of ways.  Shanghainese neen gao can be stirfried or sweet, while Guangdong (Canton) neen gao is always a dessert.   Other snacks include sesame balls as sell as sugar coated lotus seeds.

Image: By avlxyz from (optional) (Flickr) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons