Niancai are festive dishes traditionally eaten during Chinese New Year, the most important festival for the Chinese community. The dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve, also known as the reunion dinner, signifies that there will always be food and more than enough year after year. Traditionally, the reunion dinner was eaten at home. But from the 1970s, local restaurants began to introduce Chinese New Year reunion dinner menus, and some families choose to dine out to save the time and effort required to prepare this important meal.

Over the years, following the popularisation of “restaurant dishes” and the interaction between the different dialect groups, Chinese New Year festive dishes consumed by the Singaporean Chinese community have become more or less the same. They usually include poultry (chicken or duck), jumbo prawns (symbolising laughter and happiness), steamed fish (symbolising a bountiful year), pencai (symbolising abundance) and yusheng (raw fish salad symbolising success and prosperity) — the latter two having gained in popularity in recent decades. Aside from the standard festive dishes, the five main dialect groups and the Peranakan Chinese have also retained dishes that are unique to their communities.1

Teochews

For the local Teochew community, a traditional reunion meal involves gathering for a steamboat. An essential part of the meal is rabbit fish, also known as Chinese New Year fish or prosperity fish. Chinese New Year coincides with the spawning season for rabbit fish, and its scrumptious roe and milt are plentiful at this time of the year.

The older generation would also get up early on the first day of Chinese New Year to eat a bowl of sweet dessert, symbolising happiness and sweetness. Another must-have is pressed tofu (tau kwa), which sounds similar to “government official” in the Teochew dialect, and eating it during Chinese New Year symbolises a promotion in the coming year. Teochew mandarin oranges and betel nuts (now replaced by green olives) would also be on the coffee table for visitors. As Teochew mandarin oranges are larger than tangerines thus are also called daji (symbolising luck), and betel nuts (binglang) sounds like “guests have arrived”, the two items placed together suggest that guests bring luck. During Chinese New Year, congee is avoided as it is a homonym for bad luck in the Teochew dialect.

Teochews also prepare a seven-vegetable dish on the seventh day of Chinese New Year — usually consisting of mustard greens, spring greens, garlic sprouts, bok choy, Swiss chard, leeks and celery, each of which can be replaced by other vegetables. This dish symbolises prosperity, good luck, success, longevity, harmony and wealth.

Hokkiens

Sea cucumber casserole is an essential dish at a Hokkien reunion dinner, and it may be cooked with duck, pig’s trotters, or pork tendon. It is believed that the pig’s trotters can drive away bad luck so that the new year is a smooth one. Some traditional families also prepare pig stomach soup during Chinese New Year to symbolise a new beginning in health and habits.2

Ngo hiang rolls are another festive favourite. The preparation for this dish is complicated and time-consuming, involving several steps to prepare a filling of minced pork, water chestnut, starch, spring onion, radish, black fungus, egg, five-spice powder and other ingredients, which is wrapped in tofu skin to form rolls five to six inches long, which are then deep-fried.

Another common dish is kee-ah kueh, a kind of alkaline rice cake. The most traditional way to cut this cake is to hold a piece of thread between your teeth at one end, and the other end in your hand, and run the section of thread through the cake. It is usually eaten with sweet syrup or soup. The leftovers can be fried with minced garlic, pickled radish, bean sprouts and braised pork to make a new dish the next day. This dish symbolises advancement in rank and status.

Cantonese

Chinese sausage, Chinese bacon and waxed duck are all staples of a Cantonese reunion dinner, symbolising an abundance of food and clothing.3 A quintessential dish is claypot rice with a variety of waxed meat. Some restaurants also add shitake mushrooms, preserved scallops and other ingredients.

Street vendor selling Chinese sausages and waxed duck in Chinatown, 1983. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
Housewives buying Chinese sausages and waxed duck in Chinatown during Chinese New Year, 1986. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. 

In the past, housewives in Cantonese families would make three fried dishes after giving thanks to the Kitchen God on the 24th day of the 12th lunar month, including sesame balls, dough dumplings and prawn crackers, symbolising wealth and laughter.

The meal on the second day of Chinese New Year is known as hoi nin faahn or hoi ngaa in Cantonese families and is as important as the reunion dinner in terms of the quantity and variety of food. On the seventh day of Chinese New Year, Cantonese traditions call for lohei — which has now become a national practice, as yusheng is enjoyed by different dialect groups and even different races.

Hakkas

The Hakka people have roots all over China, with different festive dishes in different regions. In general, the emphasis is on eating full and well. While preparing the various delicacies for the reunion dinner, traditional Hakka women will also make snacks and kuehs.

Dishes such as yam abacus beads and thunder tea rice, which are eaten all year round, have become festive dishes for the Hakkas because of what they symbolise. Yam abacus beads symbolise wealth, while thunder tea rice is believed to promote longevity (the saying goes: if you eat three bowls of thunder tea rice a day, you can live to 98).

Hakka women also make glutinous rice cakes. The glutinous rice is ground into a paste, flavoured with pomelo or orange peel and air-dried, then on the 24th day of the 12th lunar month, known as ru nianjia — when all work stops and preparations for Chinese New Year begin — the rice cake is steamed. Hakka women would also make vegetable dumplings on this day. The dumplings are made by kneading sticky rice flour and glutinous rice flour together to make the dumpling skin, which is used to wrap fillings such as minced garlic, chive, pickled vegetables, Chinese turnip, half-ripe papaya and deep-fried dried shrimp.

On the second day of Chinese New Year, married Hakka women return to their parents’ home with a few dishes to enjoy a reunion with their maiden families.

Hainanese

Chinese New Year is known to the Hainanese community as zo nian. In the past, when conditions were relatively poor, the Hainanese started to prepare for the new year by starting to save up right after the Mid-Autumn Festival.

There is a Hainanese saying that “no reunion dinner is complete without chicken and no Chinese New Year is proper without rice crispies”. Hainanese chicken rice is one of the main dishes of the reunion dinner. The chicken is first cooked in hot water and seasoned with minced garlic, minced ginger and dark soy sauce. The rice that is shaped into balls is a reminder that family members should cherish each other. Chicken is often used as an offering in Hainanese ancestor worship, and the worship ritual held before the reunion dinner is usually very elaborate. Hainanese rice crispies (tanggong, known as pun zim in Hainanese), also known as nuomihua, is a crunchy sweet made from glutinous rice.

Another festive dish is the traditional glutinous rice cake yi bua, which contains the Hainanese people’s wish to remember their family and celebrate the reunion. This cake is slightly smaller than the palm of a hand. After the glutinous rice is ground into a paste, it is kneaded into a dumpling and wrapped around a filling of shredded coconut, granulated sugar, crushed peanuts and sesame seeds. Squares of banana leaf are then used as a base when the cake is steamed. The most challenging part of the process is to ensure that the dumpling skin is tender but not too soft, while the texture should be smooth and not sticky.

Hainanese yi bua, a glutinous rice cake. Courtesy of Lee Kok Leong.

Peranakan Chinese

The Peranakan Chinese come mainly from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian, with a small number from Chaozhou and Guangdong. On the eve of Chinese New Year, Peranakan Chinese would gather for a reunion dinner after elaborate ancestor worship rituals, with a full table of dishes as offerings. Peranakan dishes are notoriously time-consuming to prepare, and the nyonyas will start preparations well in advance. For example, the appetiser achar ahwak is usually prepared beforehand. Its preparation involves cutting cucumber, carrot, Chinese cabbage, pineapple and other vegetables and fruits into cubes or strips, then covering them in salt to dehydrate the ingredients before adding chillies, crushed peanuts, white sesame seeds and other spices to marinate.

Peranakan women would also make a variety of cakes and snacks for Chinese New Year. For example, making kueh bangkit — a coconut biscuit — is very challenging.4When done well, it should be evenly coloured, have the scent of pandan and be evenly moist to the bite.