Lunar New Year: the stories behind its traditional snacks and goodies

During Lunar New Year celebrations, you will see households having a stock load of these oranges and bringing a pair from household to household to exchange them during customary New Year visits. The oranges serve as a form of wishing good health and wealth to family and friends.

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Monash University states that mandarin oranges are a symbol of wealth as their pronunciation in Mandarin shares its similarity with the Mandarin pronunciation of the word ‘wealth’. Furthermore, the orange color of these mandarins shares a visual similarity with gold - doubly signifying wealth.

(Images: Getty and Wikimedia Commons, unless noted otherwise)

Every Lunar New Year, households stock up on their favorite snacks to welcome and usher in the beginning of a new year. Other than being delicious, these snacks have a story behind them explaining their significance to Asian people all around the world.

This Lunar New Year dessert snack is a common feature in Southeast Asian Chinese households. Its popularity has even allowed the snack to be adopted as a New Year’s snack by other cultures celebrating their own cultural festivals too. For one, southeast Asian Muslim households relish this snack during Eid.

The Singapore National Library board explains that pineapple tarts are favored for their sweetness and for containing pineapple.

The sweet taste of the snack is said to hail the sweetness of life into one’s life in the new year. Pineapple is largely favored by Chinese Hokkiens due to how the pronunciation of the word pineapple sounds similar to a phrase indicating 'wealth' in the Hokkien dialect.

‘Niangao’ (also known as ‘year cake’) is a traditional Chinese New Year snack cake made out of glutinous rice flour. The cake is wrapped in banana leaves and bought in advance by Chinese households to sit alone and harden for a few weeks before it is prepared for consumption in the new year.

‘Niangao’ can be prepared in 2 ways: steamed, or deep fried in batter.

‘Niangao’ was invented in China’s Suzhou province during ancient times. It was originally a wartime food that helped preserve the Chinese people of the Wu Kingdom during a period of starvation, thanks to the ingenuity of the dynasty’s Prime Minister Wu Zixiu.

China Highlights reports that Wu, ruling in the 4th century, allegedly foresaw the period of starvation that the Wu people would suffer before his passing. He told Wu soldiers to dig a hole under the city walls. Later, the people discovered that the bricks underground were made of glutinous rice flour and were edible - thus saving the Wu people from starvation. The bricks then came to be known as the ‘niangao’ of today.

‘Bak kwa’, or ‘rou gan’ is a savory Chinese New Year food. It is a meat jerky dish typically made out of pork that has been preserved and marinated with sugar and spices. It should be also noted that there are regional variations to the snack, as ‘bak kwa’ in Singapore and Malaysia taste smokier than their mainland Chinese counterparts as the meat is grilled over charcoal.

The snack originated in China’s Fujian province and according to an article from the National Library Board, it is a region where meat is reserved only for special occasions such as the new year.

The South China Morning Post notes that the dish came over to Singapore and Malaysia in the 15th century with Fujian migrants trying to escape poverty in the mainland. The dish then was reinvented with the move to suit local Southeast Asian tastes and has become a popular luxury snack favorite since.

‘Kueh bahulu’ is a pastry cake snack that closely resembles the French madeleine. The snack is a common fixture in Singaporean, Malaysian, and Indonesian households during festive seasons across different cultures.

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The snack, surprisingly, is not Chinese in origin but Malay. The dish came into Malaysia via the Portuguese and has been adapted to fit local Southeast Asian tastes. Similar to the ‘bak kwa’, the ‘kueh bahulu’ is prepared over a charcoal fire, unlike its original (western) variant. The popularity and tastiness of the snack have similarly allowed it to be adopted by Chinese households as a festive snack.

(Image: Singlong)

‘Tang yuan’ is a glutinous rice ball snack that is traditionally served in a sugary ginger soup. The balls can be eaten plain or with red bean paste, peanut, and sesame paste stuffed inside. The dish holds a very big importance in Chinese tradition due to what it symbolizes.

(Image: Taiwan News)

The dessert is typically eaten during the Lunar New Year as a way to symbolize togetherness and to celebrate the reunion of families during the season. From KRCW, the dish is a must-eat during the last day of the Chinese lunar new year, ‘Yuan Xiao’, the lantern festival.

Eating ‘tang yuan’ is believed to bring families happiness, luck, and harmony in the new year.

‘Kueh bangkit’ is a Chinese new year cookie snack that is white, and crumbly in texture.

(Image: Bread garden)

Tatler Asia states that ‘kueh bangkit’ was originally supposed to be an ancestral offering snack, fashioned into gold ingots for the dead to use as currency to spend in the Chinese afterlife.

‘Kueh bangkit’ is not your typical Chinese snack due to its origin. In addition, it's not typical due to its white color, as the Chinese tend to avoid white during celebrations as the color is linked to mourning. However, the dish has since been adapted into a Chinese New Year staple due to the tastiness of the snack, and it is common to see the cookies shaped into auspicious Chinese symbols such as flowers and goldfish, to herald luck into households.

(Image: Bengawan Solo)

The hawthorn candy, also known as ‘bingtang hulu’, is a snack that originated in Beijing. Traditionally, the snack is made out of coating hawthorn fruits with a layer of melted sugar that hardens when cooled, giving the snack its trademark crispiness.

Hawthorn candy in China is traditionally served as such on a skewer. However, you can also see many households carrying a different variant of the snack, haw flakes. Haw flakes are much more portable than traditional hawthorn candy due to their compact size, and this has made the snack a popular gift for children.

(Image: Amazon)

Yum China claims that, according to a folk tale, this snack originated in the ancient Chinese Song dynasty. The hawthorn snack was originally meant as a medicine for the Song Emperor’s ill concubine. With her recovery, the fruit then became hugely popular in China as not only a dessert snack but also as a digestive aid.

(Image: Pixabay)

'Yu Sheng', also known as 'Prosperity Toss', is a Cantonese-style salad known for containing raw fish. The practice of tossing the 'Yu Sheng' salad is believed to bring prosperity and good luck.

Did you know that the dish was contested to be conceived in either the 1940s in Malaysia or the 1960s in Singapore? This always makes for an interesting debate amongst the Malaysian and Singaporean ethnic Chinese that lasts to this day.

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