Popular Treats During Lunar New Year & The Meaning Behind Them
Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year holiday is a time to honor heavenly deities as well as ancestors. It is also the time to bring family together, celebrating the new year joyfully. Usually, people celebrates Lunar New Year by giving the little ones red packets containing money, also known as Ang Pao. A number of exotic foods are also present during this time of the year, some of them are…
- New Year Cake
New Year Cake was originally served to worship gods and ancestors during Lunar New Year. In the southern part of China, it is customary to make and eat it during Lunar New Year. The Chinese pronunciation of the Cake (Niangao) means ‘increasingly prosperous year after year’, which gives people new hope. The cake is made of glutinous rice powder and can be cooked by frying, steaming, stir-frying or boiling.
- Lapis Legit
This cake has many layer in it, normally, they will serve sweet cakes on this day. Even they make them sweeter than usual, as they wish to have better (sweeter) life than they had in the previous year. Kue Lapis and Lapis Legit have a meaning for having layered income through the year ahead.
- Tray of Happiness
A tray full of happiness sits by the door, ready to be shared with visitors. Sweet dried fruits like candied melon, lychee nuts, kumquats, longan, coconut sit beside salty, dyed red melon seeds, lotus seeds, and peanuts. Each food represents something to hope for in the new year: good health, a strong family, prosperity, being together, happiness, many babies, good children, and a long prosperous life.
- Mandarin
Two of the most notable food of Chinese New Year are tangerines and oranges. Whereas tangerines represent wealth, oranges are a popular symbol of good luck. The associations come from a similarity between the Chinese words for tangerine and gold, as well as a resemblance between the words orange and good luck. It isn’t uncommon in Chinese culture for similar sounding words with very different meanings (homonyms) to become suggestive of one another over time. Oranges and tangerines are also a bright, vibrant orange, a happy color that’s associated with good fortune.
That’s all about popular food for Lunar New Year, I hope everything you want to know is in this article.
Happy Lunar New Year!
Sumber Penulis / Daftar Pusaka:
https://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/holidays/new-year/food.htm
https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/10-chinese-new-year-food-superstitions1.htm
http://thingsasian.com/story/celebrating-chinese-new-year-tray-happiness
https://www.shopback.co.id/blog/12-makanan-khas-imlek-dan-maknanya-yang-penuh-keberuntungan
