26 Traditional Chinese New Year Food for an Auspicious 2025
Chinese New Year is a rich celebration that happens yearly each winter to kick off the New Year in the Chinese astrological calendar. Each year is represented by an animal. 2025, for example, was the Year of the Snake, an animal that represents introspection, strategic planning and personal growth. We've rounded up a list of some of the most commonly found Chinese New Year foods served at gatherings and celebrations in Asian countries and worldwide.
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- Chinese New Year Foods and Their Meanings
- Traditional Chinese New Year Food
- Sweet Chinese New Year Desserts
- Chinese New Year Foods FAQs
Chinese New Year Foods and Their Meanings
Each year many Asian cultures all over the world use this time as a celebration, offering chances for personal introspection, time to gather with family and friends and to throw extravagant festivals with lanterns, puppetry and traditional Chinese performances.
An important element in many events and celebrations is traditional Chinese New Year food. Many of these Chinese favorites are available all year long but they are imbued with greater symbolic meanings during this special season.
1. Steamed Fish
Fish is a staple in many Asian countries but it can also be quite lucky to the Chinese. It typically symbolizes surplus and abundance, especially when served whole and uncut, including the head and scales. It’s customary to eat most of the fish but not all, leaving some on the plate as a desire for the abundance to continue into the new year.
2. Noodles
Changshou Mian or “longevity noodles," are a popular Chinese New Year food for many, with roots in Ancient China. Over a foot long, these noodles are associated with a long lifespan. It’s believed that Han Dynasty emperor Wu noted a similarity between a long face, a feature often associated with a long life, and the Chinese word for “noodle” establishing an enduring connection between the two.
3. Sweet Rice Balls
These sticky sweet rice balls are served as a Chinese New Year food that represents unity. Yuanxiao or tangyuan, are sweet rice balls served in syrup during Lantern Festivals, an important way of celebrating Chinese New Year. They are associated with a sweet and harmonious, as well as to represent family unity and togetherness.
4. Golden Spring Rolls
This Chinese New Year food represents prosperity with its golden color that resembles gold bars, a symbol of wealth and luxury. A more delicate rice paper wrapping contains contents like carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, vermicelli noodles, bean sprouts and various meats like pork or shrimp.
5. Citrus Fruits
Citrus fruits like tangerines oranges and pomelos are often served as Chinese New Year food and given as gifts to represent luck, fortune and abundance. In some customs, they were placed near children's pillows to scare off monsters around the Lunar New Year. Giving and offering fruits is considered an act of good fortune.
6. Leafy Greens
Green is a color associated with wealth and currency, so leafy greens like lettuce, spinach and bok choy are often served as a Chinese New Year food. During Chinese New Year, these foods are often included in stir fry, soups, spring rolls and salads. The hope is some of that promised prosperity will manifest in your new year.
6. Dumplings
Chinese dumplings can usually be found stuffed with pork, shrimp, chicken or other meats along with vegetables. The pocket shapes have sometimes been compared to ancient Chinese ingots and currency, giving them the symbolism of wealth and prosperity. Some believe the amount of dumplings you consume during the New Year can be compared to the amount of money and financial gain for the year you will make.
8. Tray of Togetherness
Served on a tray divided into six or eight compartments, an assortment of items like dried fruit, nuts and candy can represent luck and fortune. This tray is often part of Chinese New Year snacks. It can also contain dessert items like almond cookies to be shared with family and friends.
Traditional Chinese New Year Food
9. Buddha’s Delight
This vegetarian Chinese New Year food is usually served on the first day of the Chinese New Year and represents the Buddha's vegetarian meat-free diet that helps him to achieve the self-purification necessary for spiritual practice. Ingredients include mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots, cabbage and glass noodles.
10. Whole Chicken
Another symbol of prosperity, luck and wholeness in this list of Chinese New Year food, chickens are often served whole in their entirety, with both the head and feet included. Chicken feet are associated with luck and can often be found alone as a Chinese delicacy at dim sum restaurants year-round.
11. Steamed Buns
These buns are wrapped in soft dough and stuffed with ingredients like red bean paste, miso carrots and ground or shredded pork. The buns are usually served with accompanying sauces and can be found in many dim sum restaurants year-round, not just for Chinese New Year food.
12. Orange Chicken
As popular in the West as in the East, this fried chicken dish involves battered chicken meat mixed with orange juice, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, lemon juice and soy, chili and hoisin sauce. It's served over rice and is often believed to represent the concepts of yin and yang, a symbol of opposite existing balance.
13. Summer Rolls
Rice paper sheets wrap up an assortment of shrimp or rice with rice noodles, crisp veggies and green herbs like cilantro, mint and basil. Light and transparent, they can be dipped in many different sauces but the most popular may be peanut sauce.
14. Wonton Soup
Available at most Chinese eateries, these small meat-filled wonton dumplings are submerged in a rich vegetable and meat broth. It can contain veggies like bok choy and green onion and is a wintertime staple for many Chinese people. It makes a cozy and hearty part of your Chinese New Year food menu.
15. Egg Drop Soup
Another popular soupy Chinese New Year food, this one features strands of creamy egg suspended in a rich chicken broth that is slightly thickened with cornstarch. Eggs often represent birth and new beginnings in Chinese culture.
Sweet Chinese New Year Desserts
16. Prosperity Cakes
These sweet and steamed Chinese New Year foods have split tops, which reportedly correspond in number with the amount of happiness and luck you will have in the coming year.
17. Year Cake
This cake “nian gao", can be translated as “higher year". It's a sticky white flour cake that is sometimes used as an offering Chinese New Year food during ceremonies. Eating it, gifting or offering it can bring a person wealth, health and happiness.
18. Eight Treasure Rice
This sticky rice included eight elements each with their own associations, including seeds, plums, jackfruit, raisins and other treats. The number eight is associated with luck in Chinese culture, so including eight items in your rice is a bringer of good fortune in the next year.
19. Almond Cookies
Another popular Chinese New Year food found often in eateries, almond cookies boast a round shape that denotes wholeness and good fortune. They are believed to bring financial luck over the next year to those who enjoy them.
20. Lucky Candy
This red foiled wrapped strawberry hard candy is often served as a treat during the Chinese New Year season, especially for children, where it represents coming luck and prosperity for those who eat it and give it to others.
21. Smiling Sesame Cookie Balls
These cookie balls with a delicate crunch and an arched shape remind many of a smiling face. This Chinese New Year food usually represents happiness and laughter and is soft in the center with a crispy sesame-crusted crunch on the outside.
22. Candied Winter Melon
These small sticks of melon are dipped in a sugary, sticky syrup and dried into a chewy gummy candy texture. For children, these Chinese New Year foods can represent growth and development as well as good health.
23. Candied Lotus Root
These slices of honeycomb-shaped roots from the lotus plant are dipped in sweet syrup and sugar and then dried to form a popular candy often served as a Chinese New Year food, sometimes as part of a tray of sweets. They usually signify continued abundance and joy for the following year.
24. Congee with Youtiao (Chinese Donuts)
Congee is a rice porridge soup that is usually consumed early in the day. During the Chinese New Year, the porridge is often served with a variety of small fried donuts that are perfect for dipping in the soup.
25. Fortune Cookies
One of the most popular Chinese New Year foods (well, actually an American invention), this crispy cooky made from flour, sugar, egg and sesame oil bears small messages from the specific to the general prophetic, with some containing language lessons and lucky numbers.
26. Sweet Potato Tapioca Dessert Soup
A sweet Chinese dessert soup, this blends sweet potato and taro sweet potato together which results in an orange or purple soup. It can be served warm or cola and has a texture similar to tapioca pudding.
Chinese New Year Foods FAQs
What is the lucky food for Chinese New Year?
Golden spring rolls are a popular Chinese New Year food that is considered lucky due to their resemblance to golden bars, a symbol and color associated with good fortune in Chinese culture.
What food is traditionally eaten at Chinese New Year?
There are many Chinese New Year foods, both simple and complex, eaten during the new year. Fish is one of the most popular and readily available in many Asian countries that celebrate Chinese or Lunar New Year traditions. It's served whole, complete with scales, eyes and fins intact. It can signify prosperity and luck for the new year.
What is the lucky fruit for Chinese New Year?
Citrus fruits are associated with wealth, wholeness and prosperity for the new year and include kumquats, pomelos, tangerines and mandarin oranges. Other lucky fruits include winter melon, which is usually served in a candied form.
Looking for the perfect traditional Chinese New Year foods to help celebrate this holiday? Combine any of these foods with your celebrations. You may even want to bring some of them in as part of your more western New Year's Eve food to accompany New Year's Eve cocktails.
For even more fun New Year ideas, check out other experiences happening on Classpop!
