(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-02-14 09:16

Niangao, a rice or millet cake, in the shape of fish, looks more appealing. [File photo]

Jiaozi, or boiled dumplings, are more popular in North China. The shape of this food is considered auspicious, because it resembles yuanbao (shoe-shaped golden or silver ingots used as money in ancient China).

Jiaozi are made with a flour-dough wrapping packed with nearly every imaginable kind of stuffing - meat, egg, seafood and vegetables. They are served with vinegar, garlic and soy sauce with generous amounts of sesame oil.

There are also deep-fried and steamed jiaozi, called guotie. In North China, jiaozi is always served for the first meal of the Chinese New Year. In Beijing, people sometimes hide a coin or candy in one of the dumplings, and the diner who bites the hidden treasure is believed to be in for a very good year.

Beijingers also make steamed rice cakes with red Chinese jujube, served with sugar, while people in Hebei and Shanxi provinces prefer deep-fried millet cake with mashed red bean or jujube stuffing.

In South China, in addition to steamed and deep-fried rice cakes, people also cut dried ones into slices to fry in dishes with other ingredients, or to add to soup. Rice cakes are also made into sweet dim sum flavors with rose, osmanthus flowers or mint.

Families throughout China start shopping in preparation for the banquet before Spring Festival Eve. While chicken, duck, fish and pork are essential meats for the meals, today's Chinese nianyefan (dinner on Spring Festival Eve) is incredibly diverse.

Increasingly, Chinese are starting to reserve tables at restaurants for the big meal to save all the trouble of staging their own banquet. Big names in catering, such as Quanjude, start receiving orders as early as three months before the big day.

Some musts for Spring Festival Eve in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, are plain boiled chicken chops, steamed fish and roast pork. When the food is ready, the family will offer sacrifices to the gods and their ancestors, a ritual followed by setting off firecrackers and another, bigger dinner.

In Xi'an, Shaanxi province, in addition to eating boiled dumpling at midnight on Spring Festival Eve, families prepare fried pork strips and brown sugar and soy sauce. These are eaten with sweet steamed glutinous rice with brown sugar, drizzled with liquor, which is then burned off the top.

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