The Lunar New Year has many traditions associated with it, and while many of these are gradually being thrown out the window by a generation too preoccupied to bother, the New Year's Eve family dinner remains entrenched in Taiwanese society. All kinds of dishes, many of them bad for the waistline and blood pressure, are essential to see in the New Year properly, for, as we are told, each dish has important symbolic significance.
The first dish on a New Year's Eve menu is often a cold mixed platter, usually with a choice of five types of food. Regularly to be seen are haizhepi (
Fish is an absolute must at the New Year's Eve table, largely because of a homophone. The word fish (
PHOTO COURTESY OF PRESIDENT CONVENIENCE STORES
A whole chicken is also often thought a necessary part of the meal. This is partly due to a kind of rhyming aphorism in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), "Eat a chicken, establish a home" (
Fortunately, given the excess of fish and meat that is served up at most Lunar New Year's Eve dinners, a number of vegetables also have auspicious references.
Mustard greens are commonly consumed during the holiday because in Chinese they are called "long years vegetable" (
PHOTO COURTESY OF PRESIDENT CONVENIENCE STORES
Fat choy (
It's not only expensive foods that make the cut; the radish is also traditionally part of the meal. In Hoklo, radish (
These are just some of the associations between food and folklore that are brought to the fore over the Lunar New Year, but the ultimate demand is that the food be exotic and varied. For this reason, one of the most popular choices is the dish "Buddha jumps over the wall" (
Preparing all of this food entails a good deal of cooking, and few families in urban centers have time to make such elaborate preparations. According to a study commissioned by the President Chain Stores (
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April 29 to May 5
One month before the Taipei-Keelung New Road (
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