8 Lucky Dishes & Snacks You Should Eat For An Auspicious Chinese New Year

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Otherwise known as treasure pot or big bowl feast, poon choi is a traditional Cantonese festival meal that comprises different layers of ingredients in one massive pot. 

It's filled with the best ingredients, such as abalone, prawns, scallops, pork, chicken, mushroom, black fungus, roast duck, and many more, all deemed as lucky food — which is why it's affectionately known as treasure pot. 

While families would often prepare poon choi by themselves in the past, most Chinese restaurants nowadays offer the dish for takeaway or dine-in (pre-order required) to save them the hassle of preparing it. 

While steamed fish can be enjoyed all year, it is customary for Chinese families to serve it during Chinese New Year, and for various reasons. 

Firstly, the mandarin word for both fish and abundance is yu, which makes the dish a particularly important one, as it represents abundance and prosperity. 

It is also customary to serve a whole fish — with the head and tail attached — to symbolise good beginnings and endings for years to come. 

Similar to the fish, the chicken, usually roasted or steamed with simple ingredients, should also be served in its entirety to represent unity, wholeness, as well as good beginnings and endings.

Both 'chicken' and 'good luck' in Mandarin are pronounced as ji, signifying that eating chicken during Chinese New Year will bring plenty of good luck. 

Some families also have this tradition where the breadwinner must eat the chicken feet, as it's believed that it will help them grasp wealth.

Known as ba bao fan in Mandarin, eight treasure rice is a sticky rice pudding with — as its name suggests — eight 'treasures' as toppings, such as longan, plums, raisins, lotus seeds, and honey melons, among others. 

You're probably more than aware that eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture, hence the eight toppings, representing longevity, a harmonious marriage, and auspiciousness. Besides that, eating desserts during this holiday also signifies sweetness for the year ahead. 

A Chinese cuisine staple that needs no introduction, dumplings are associated with wealth, as their shape represents Chinese ingots.

That's why it's believed that the more dumplings you eat during the celebrations, the more money you'll make! In fact, to ensure prosperity and wealth, different practices of eating dumplings have come into play. 

For example, it is important to line all the dumplings in straight lines, instead of a circle, to symbolise that life is heading somewhere. Some people also add auspicious items into the dumplings' stuffing, such as a clean coin to signify more wealth for the person who eats it, and a thread to symbolise longevity. 

Also known as lucky cake or fortune cake, prosperity cake is often made and eaten during Chinese New Year to bring prosperity. 

The cake is known for its split tops, and according to tradition, the more splits it has, the luckier you'll be in the new year. 

A Cantonese dish, spring rolls are a type of dim sum consisting of radishes, pork, and vegetables wrapped in thin dough wrappers, which are then deep-fried until they turn golden brown. 

Spring rolls resemble gold bars because of their colour, and are said to bring wealth and prosperity. The snack even inspired a Chinese saying, "Huang jin wan liang", which translates to a tonne of gold. 

The Tray of Togetherness is a circular or octagonal-shaped platter, divided into either six or eight compartments, each holding an array of candies, fruits, nuts, cookies, and coins. Each of these items carries its own symbolic meanings, but they are all generally deemed to bring luck.

Aside from luck, the Tray of Togetherness also represents peace and family harmony, so it is customary for Chinese families to serve the platter during the festive season. 

Mmhmm, Coca-Cola is here to bring even greater prosperity to your meals this Chinese New Year, making reunion and feasting moments all the more magical.

Colour aside, just imagine sipping the refreshing taste of Coca-Cola, as you makan your favourite food right now, mmmm.

Plus, with this Chinese New Year being the Year of the Rabbit, Coca-Cola has designed their cans with visually-aesthetic rabbits that will confirm make you wanna collect them all!