Chinese New Year taboos in Shanghai

In Shanghai culture, tofu is a food that's usually offered to the friends and relatives of a deceased person during the wake and is hence regarded as an inauspicious thing to have on the dining table during the first 15 days of the Lunar New Year.

However, tofu takes on a completely different meaning in Northern China where people say its Mandarin pronunciation sounds like "blessings to all".

Shanghai people are generally frugal individuals and they will usu-ally keep leftover rice for breakfast the next morning, heating it up with hot water. But one will never find this on the table on New Year's Day because people associate it with economic difficulty.