Chinese New Year Charmaine Mok The Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is one of the oldest and most important festivals for the Chinese people. In 2010, Chinese New Year begins on 14 February.

In this article

Preparing for good luck New Year's Eve A feast of fortune

Regional differences Tray of togetherness Lantern Festival

Chinese recipes Chinese Food Made Easy

Chinese New Year is a time for families to reunite, not only to welcome in the new lunar year, but also to feast together and wish each other good fortune. Getting ready for the new year can begin as early as the preceding month, when families will be doing all they can to ensure a smooth and auspicious transition from one year to the next. As such, houses are swept and cleaned from top-to-bottom to rid the home of any bad luck that may cling and carry over to the new year.

Red paper fortune scrolls, on which prosperous greetings and blessings are written, are put up around the home to ensure the household has an auspicious new year. New clothes and shoes will be bought, and hair cut to symbolise a fresh start. After these preliminary preparations, the focus shifts onto the food that will be eaten and served over the Spring Festival.

Often the meal will continue after midnight, so that fortunes may also carry over into the new year

The eve of the Spring Festival is perhaps one of the most important days of celebration. It is the day for families to reunite and feast on the most sumptuous meal of the holiday. Often the meal will continue after midnight, so that fortunes may also carry over into the new year. Many new year dishes are served 'whole' - such as whole fish, or whole chicken or duck - as the action of slicing and cutting carries bad connotations, such as severing family ties. As such, food preparation is done sometimes far in advance before the new year to avoid bad omens.

Dining tables during Chinese New Year will not only be laden with food, but also with fortune - this is because many of the dishes, and the ingredients that go in them, have symbolic meanings often alluding to wealth, health, and prosperity. Whole fish is often seen on the menu, as the Chinese adage 'nian nian you yu' (in Mandarin, or 'neen neen yau yu' in Cantonese), which translates as 'may you have abundance every year', and which also sounds like the phrase 'every year have fish'. Appropriately, there's always a bit of fish left at the end of the meal to ensure the diners will have an excess of fortune in the coming year.

Some foods may be eaten simply because of their names - the Cantonese word for tangerines, for example, sounds like the word for 'gold'. Similarly, black moss (a hair-like algae) is referred to as 'fat choi' - coincidentally, the phrase for prosperity that appears in the well known Chinese New Year greeting 'kung hei fat choi'. Usually eaten in combination with dried oysters ('ho see'), the two foods together mean 'good business and growing fortune'.

The foods eaten over the Chinese New Year can vary between regions. Northern Chinese, for example, will ring in the new year by making and eating dumplings ('jiaozi'), as their shape resembles gold ingots. The name 'jiaozi' also sounds like the word for China's earliest form of paper money, so dumplings are thought to bring wealth to those who eat them.

A popular tradition among Chinese walled village communities is a big hearty meal called 'poon choi', a feast that is served in a giant bowl (traditionally made of wood). Diners help themselves to the food in the bowl, which includes a vast quantity of ingredients - pork, chicken, beef, duck, prawns, tofu, abalone, dried mushrooms, Chinese radish, and so on - layered on top of one another and usually braised. The eating of poon choi is a communal activity and is considered important for family relations.

In the southern regions of China and Hong Kong, common celebration dishes are turnip cake ('loh bak go') and new year cake ('neen go'). Traditionally, these were made in the home and then given to relatives as a token of love and respect, though the abundance of ready-made turnip and new year cakes in supermarkets and restaurants means that the laborious process of making these new year foods at home has largely been eliminated.

New year cake, in particular, is an important dish among all Chinese. Its glutinous texture symbolises cohesiveness, and therefore emphasises the hope for close family ties. It's also the food commonly offered to the kitchen god, the figure who is believed to report on the family's behaviour over the last year to the heavens. By ceremoniously offering the sweet and sticky new year cake at his altar, it's hoped that he will have nothing but sweet things to say - or perhaps, his mouth would be too full of cake to speak of anything!

A Chinese home would not be complete during the New Year celebrations without the 'tray of togetherness', a round or octagonal tray with eight individual compartments (the number eight symbolises fortune). As a lot of home entertaining takes place over the holiday, the tray of togetherness represents these family gatherings. Each compartment is filled with a treat, each with its own meaning - popular ones include melon seeds (for wealth), lotus root seeds (for fertility), and in modern times, sweets such as chocolate coins or ingots for a sweet new year.

The Spring Festival is celebrated over 15 days, culminating in the Lantern Festival on the last day. Traditionally, glutinous rice dumplings ('yuan xiao') with sweet fillings, such as black sesame or ground peanuts, are eaten on this day while admiring decorative lanterns to symbolise completeness - the perfect way to end the fortnight of Spring Festival celebrations.

Celebrate Chinese New Year with these recipes or find more Chinese recipes with the BBC Food Recipe finder.

• Red-cooked pork belly by Mike Robinson (VIDEO RECIPE); a text-only version is also available
• Black bean steamed scallops with noodles by Ching He-Huang (VIDEO RECIPE); a text-only version is also available
• Wok-cooked monkfish with sesame soy sauce by Ching He-Huang (VIDEO RECIPE); a text-only version is also available
• Spiced beef stir-fry topped with spring onion and coriander by Ching He-Huang (VIDEO RECIPE); a text-only version is also available
• Chinese ginger fish by Jill Dupleix
• Steamed Cantonese-style fish by Ken Hom
• Steamed lobster, stir fried with black bean and chilli sauce by Kylie Kwong
• Steamed sea bass with soy and ginger by John Torode
• Aromatic pork belly hot pot by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
• Greens with oyster sauce by Anthony Worrall Thompson
• Stir-fried salt and pepper prawns by Rick Stein
• Sichuan pepper beef by Ching He-Huang

Find out more about cooking Chinese food with Ching He-Huang, from shopping for ingredients to mastering essential techniques, on the Chinese Food Made Easy website.