資料來源：http://chinapost.com.tw/guidepost/topics/default.asp?id=3240&next=1&sub=5
In Chinese culture, the Lunar New Year's Eve reunion dinner is by far the most important meal of the year. In fact, considering that Chinese-speaking people are the most populous in the world, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the reunion dinner as the world's most culturally significant meal.
Additionally, the people in the Greater China region — Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau — share the same time zone, which means that hundreds of millions of reunion meals are shared at family tables across the region at roughly the same time. The financial impact of the reunion dinner and other Chinese New Year food items is so significant that the Taipei City Government launched the Fo Tiao Qiang Index to gauge commodity prices during the holiday season.
Historically, the reunion dinner was the most extravagant meal of the year. In the past, people could not generally afford to eat items such as pork, chicken or fish as part of their normal diet. For this reason, these items were saved for this important occasion.
The importance of this meal is also emphasized by the customs and traditions surrounding it. For example, one Lunar New Year's Eve custom states that a married woman cannot return to her parents' home to share their reunion meal. Tradition dictates that if she were to do so, she would carry her family's good fortune for the coming year back to her husband's family.
Ingredients for reunion dinners are also picked for their auspicious connotations. For example, the Chinese word for "fish" sounds the same as the word for "leftover" or "surplus." For that reason, the fish dishes are intentionally left unfinished during reunion dinners and stored overnight so that the "surplus" can be passed on to the next year. This is intended to signify that we will accumulate more and more each year.
Reunion meal dishes vary from region to region in mainland China. People in the north generally gather for hot pot meals with dumplings, fish, rice cakes and Chinese mustard. Dumplings are a New Year's Eve must because they resemble Chinese gold ingots and therefore signify prosperity. Rice cakes (known in Chinese as "nian gao," literally year cakes) are considered a blessing for children because the word "gao" sounds the same in Chinese as the word for "tall." Eating rice cakes, therefore, carries the meaning of getting taller every year. Chinese mustard is also called "zhang nian cai" (literally yearlong vegetable), making it a symbol of longevity.
Families in southern China generally don't eat hot pot for reunion dinners, though they do also typically use ingredients such as chicken, fish, pork, etc. One special New Year dish in southern China is "black moss with dried oyster." It is popular because its Cantonese pronunciation, "fat choy ho see," sounds similar to the pronunciation for "prosperous and good things."
Both northern- and southern-style reunion dishes can be found in Taiwan. Nowadays, families have become smaller, and time and space have become more valuable than meat and seafood. For this reason, people are increasingly outsourcing reunion meal preparation to restaurants by either dining out or buying ready-made dishes. As a result, reunion dinners are getting fancier and now sometimes include dishes such as lobster and the aforementioned fo tiao qiang — a famously expensive course traditionally made from ingredients such as bamboo shoots, scallops, sea cucumber, abalone, shark fin, Jinhua ham, ginseng and mushrooms.
No matter what style of cuisine you prefer, the most important aspect of a good Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is the joyful faces of family members getting together to mark the end of a year and welcome the arrival of a new one.
資料來源：http://chinapost.com.tw/guidepost/topics/default.asp?id=3240&next=1&sub=5
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