Food, glorious food
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Bountiful Chinese New Year foods are filled with symbolism. A dumpling isn’t just a dumpling, it’s an ingot. A fish isn’t just a fish, it’s a sign of prosperity. Ruby Gao, Bivash Mukherjee and Donald MacPhail go shopping.
Eating and an overabundance of food are the highlights of Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, a time of family reunion, new beginnings and wishes for success and prosperity.
Many Spring Festival foods are considered auspicious because of their shape, color, name and pronunciation.
They include dumplings, cakes and other round foods — round symbolizing union, reunion and completeness.
Ingot-shaped dumplings and golden-colored foods are popular because they represent fortune.
Red is an auspicious color, signifying vitality and prosperity, so red bean paste, red jujubes, red yeast, red chillies and other red ingredients are used liberally.
Fish is traditional because the Mandarin pronunciation of fish, yu, can also mean surplus, abundance and continued prosperity.
Foods with eight ingredients, such as congee, are popular because eight is a lucky number and sounds like the word for abundance and prosperity.
The food celebration starts on the La Ba Festival, the eighth day of the 12th lunar month which fell last Wednesday this year, when Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment.
Rich, colorful congee made of at least eight (ba) ingredients (and often many more) is served.
“The congee is particularly aromatic. I believe it’s because monks cook it with their heart filled with kindness,” says Faye Gu, who insists queuing in front of a temple every year.
Congee varies around the country. In the north, it’s savory and made from corn, millet, sorghum, fungus, lotus seeds and ham. In the south, it’s sweeter, made of glutinous rice and other grains, chestnuts, lotus seeds, longan and jujubes.
The big family meal on the Chinese New Year’s Eve is the most important, featuring auspicious dishes that represent luck, happiness and wealth.
Food shaped like ingots, round coins or foods that are golden are lucky. In the north people eat jiaozi (dumplings shaped like ingots), filled with minced pork and greens. In the east, people have round golden cakes made of pumpkin flour and filled with red bean paste. In Guangdong and Fujian provinces in the south, people eat jinju, literally golden orange, a kind of round kumquat.
Symbolic glutinous balls with sweet filing represent family reunion and are essential to the celebration. The balls are called yuanxiao in the north and tangyuan in the south. Popular fillings include black sesame, red bean paste, peanuts and hawthorn. Lard is added for a silky texture and rich aroma.
In the east, people eat ba bao fan, literally “eight treasure rice.” It’s a half-sphere dessert made of glutinous rice, filled with red bean paste, topped with jujube, lotus seeds, dried longan, melon seeds and preserved fruit.
As for red, there’s steaming hotpot with plenty of red chilies, sweet jujube soup, tangerine-flavored red bean paste, ding sheng gao (glutinous rice cake colored with red yeast). Red-colored preserved sausage and reddish duck braised in soybean sauce are popular.
Fish (yu) representing prosperity and overabundance are popular, including sweet-and-sour fish, fish soup, fish balls and yu sheng, a raw fish salad popular in the south. Some foods are shaped like a lucky fish.
Niangao or glutinous rice cakes are popular throughout China since the words sound like the words for getting promoted and being exalted. In the north, the cakes are generally served without filling, made into soup with cabbage, highlighting their glutinous texture.
In the east, especially in Shanghai and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, gao is served as dessert. It’s usually sweetened with osmanthus and stuffed with red bean paste or jujubes.
Shanghai shopping
Chinese New Year’s preparation in Shanghai begins with food shopping at nanhou dian, literally south specialty store.
The traditional stores sell dried, marinated and preserved foods as well as snacks and candies. All the foods and treats are displayed in open counter and bins so visitors can feel, touch and smell the food.
Salespeople are mostly easygoing middle-aged locals known for providing professional cooking suggestions.
People start shopping at least a week before Chinese New Year’s Eve to source ingredients for the big family dinner.
One counter sells meats, such as preserved ham and sausage, as well as duck and chicken. Preserved ham is used to make soup, usually with dried bamboo shoots, fungus and pork ribs. Duck is braised in soybean sauce.
The seafood counter sells various dried fish, abalone, shrimp and sea cucumber; the abalone and sea cucumber impart an umami flavor, but they are very expensive.
Shanghai is known for the counters selling “drunken” and marinated river snails and hairy crab saturated in liquor, which are served as appetizers.
The grain and cereals counter sells red beans, black glutinous rice, jujubes, black sesame and other ingredients for sweet dessert congee and sweetened glutinous rice.
Local candies include White Rabbit milk candy and liqueur chocolates shaped like bottles and filled with baijiu, or distilled spirit.
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