Sumber Dari : PW Food, Taryn Pire. December 2024

It all starts with the reunion dinner, which is basically a big family feast where everyone comes together to share their wishes for health, happiness and prosperity in the year ahead. It’s arguably the most popular festivity of the holiday, so much so that countless people travel to celebrate with their relatives.

1. Whole Steamed Fish Whole fish (yú, 鱼) is often served steamed at the unity dinner (though it can also be boiled or braised), due to the Chinese belief that it will bring prosperity. It’s crucial that the fish be served with its head and tail to represent both a good beginning and end to the year; in fact, half the fish is saved to eat the following day to ensure long-lasting future prosperity.

2. Chinese Dumpling Legend has it that the more dumplings (jiǎozi, 饺子) you eat during Spring Festival, the more money you can make in the new year. (Challenge accepted.) The Chinese word for them represents the exchange between the old and new year, as it’s a combination of the words for “exchange” and “midnight.” It’s thought that eating dumplings during Lunar New Year ushers in the new and banishes the old.

3. Spring Rolls This dish are popular in Eastern China for Lunar New Year, these handhelds (chūnjuǎn, 春卷) symbolize wealth and are named spring rolls because they’re eaten during Spring Festival. A Cantonese dish, spring rolls are a type of dim sum made of thin dough wrappers stuffed with vegetables or meat.

4.Longevity Noodles If you’ve ever dug into a bowl of lo mein, you know how much slurping noodles can require. Longevity noodles (cháng shòu miàn, 长寿面), which are eaten for luck and a long life, take it to a whole other level. In Northern China, these noodles can be up to two feet long (!!!). Legend has it that the longer your noodle, the longer your life—just don’t bite it or break it while it’s cooking, since that signifies a life cut short.

5. Hot Pot Maybe you’ve had Korean jeongol or Vietnamese lẩu, but hot pot (huǒ guō, 火锅) is widely considered to have been invented by the Chinese. “There are many types of hot pot, but generally it’s an interactive meal where you have a pot of simmering [seasoned] broth at the center of the table with raw meats, seafood, vegetables, tofu, starches and other ingredients cut into small pieces for fast cooking,” Sarah Leung, one of the four multigenerational food bloggers behind The Woks of Life, told PureWow.