What food do Chinese people eat for New Years? Turns out that people in the East, the South, the West, and the North all eat different things.
Last year, Min Guo, who grew up in Guangdong, noted that while she had heard dumplings (饺子, jiaozi) mentioned as Chinese New Year food on TV all her life, in fact she had never eaten jiaozi for Chinese New Year and indeed had never had a jiaozi until she went to middle school! So she polled six of her friends from six different provinces. Well, it turns out its not just us Cantonese who don’t eat jiaozi for Chinese New Year.
After you read this, help us continue the survey by sharing what you ate for Chinese New Year eve dinner!
In case you can’t see the Slideshare, this list shows the different foods eaten across different provinces:
1. Urumqi – Xinjiang
- Roast Lamb
- Chinese Alcohol
- Jiaozi
2. Harbin – Heilongjiang
- Chicken Stew Mushroom
- Pork Stew Green Bean Noodle
- Friend Pork with Sweet & Sour Sauce
3. Xinxiang – Henan
- Sausage
- Soup with Chicken & Corn
- Bun with Red Bean Paste
4. Yichang – Hubei
- Sausage
- Fish
- Rice Cake
5. Nanchang – Jiangxi
- Red Carp
- Homemade Rice Wine
- Sticky Rice
6. Guangzhou – Guangdong
- Boiled Chicken
- Soup
- Sweet Dumpling
If you are Chinese, please help us complete the survey! What city and province are you from? What did you eat for your Chinese New Year eve dinner this year? (drop it in comments below)
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Chinese New Year Food Map: a survey 
I’m not Chinese myself, but I live in Harbin and I know any of my Chinese friends that I’ve spoken with will be having 饺子 this evening…
OK then I guess Harbin joins the 饺子 provinces!
Does being Chinese-American count? My family’s Cantonese and every year we eat Buddha’s Delight (jai), turnip cake, and water chestnut cake, without fail.
I ate turnip cake too. Yum!
Turnip cake (萝卜糕） definitely is a New Year food of Cantonese, and if Rice Cake refers to (年糕） then it is popular among Cantonese and many other southeastern Chinese too. BTW, traditional Cantonese people don’t favor dumplings very much (though nowadays it is more popular under the influence under the northern migrants), may be the “Sweet Dumplings” refers to Syumai ( 烧卖）or something else?
Hmmm…rice cake! Southeastern Chinese definitely. :)
Syumai is Sweet Dumplings? But it isn’t really sweet~~
I love this entry! I copied a bit for my blog (I hope you don’t mind) BUT with complete references to your blog! :) Happy New Year!
Excerpt from my blog–
Well, for CNY, our family eats misua teng and lumpia. But I am not from China.
My mum cooks the best misua teng and lumpia. So that’s why I’ve grown very, very fat already. Haha.
What an interesting post!
My mother’s family in Taipei – headed up by my Grandma who is originally from Guangdong Province – invariably eats turnip cake and pickled vegetables, fried fish, and soup (two kinds this year: Buddha jumping over the bridge soup and lotus root and pork) . Usually we also have the boiled chicken with garlic and ginger sauce, but this year we did not, probably because we also had curried chicken and fried shrimp, which are not traditional.
My father’s family in Hong Kong also had a CNY meal this year, but it was a bit different because we are celebrating the birth of a new member of our family, so there was a specific dish (san xian bao) for that. But we almost always have facai and mushrooms there; facai plays an important role in the desertification of Inner Mongolia, so it inevitably creates great guilt when I eat it.
We always have lavish spreads for CNY. Not Cantonese but since most people in Kuala Lumpur speak cantonese, we usually eat food with names that sound propitious in Cantonese. However, since most of us also know a bit of other dialects, we also follow some dishes from other dialects as well (and it just gives us a reason to pig out even more!).
Chicken and pork are the common meats.
Fish – Overflowing 余
Black moss – Prosperous 发财
Prawns – Laughing 哈哈笑
Oysters – Good events 好事
Leafy greens – Good relations 亲热
Sea cucumber – Happiness 开心
Longevity noodles
And loads of other stuff that I can’t recall at the moment.
My mother’s family was originally from Fujian and they have a special type of handmade noodle that’s a must for CNY.