Chinese New Year: auspicious dishes around China, from ‘accessible windfall’ to ‘a room of gold and silver’
- The biggest festival in the Chinese calendar is a time of extravagant meals whose names are homophones for things that bring you luck
- We visit three Hong Kong restaurants serving new year dishes from Shanghai, Beijing and Sichuan, and hear from their homesick chefs
Chinese New Year is not a time for dieting. All across China, people are feasting and drinking, celebrating with extravagant meals as a reward for their hard work over the past year, and with high hopes for the new.
Home cooks start preparing for the most important reunion dinner at least a month in advance. Inyears past, when meat and seafood were not readily available or affordable in China, the festival was the only time when frugal home cooks would spend more than usual on luxury proteins to please the family.
Vegetarian and vegan Chinese New Year dining: a Hong Kong top four
In some regions, such as Sichuan, Hunan and Yunnan, the family would create preserved delicacies to be used in stir-fries and stews served at the New Year’s Eve banquet. Cuts of pork, duck, chicken and even fish would be marinated and hung outdoors to dry in the cold air, or above the kitchen stove.
Chinese people like to give celebratory dishes an auspicious four-syllable name.
At 10 Shanghai, a restaurant in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, the menu being offered in the lead-up to the Lunar New Year is a selection of some of the best dishes served in Shanghai during the Spring Festival.
