Dinner of reunion and luck

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Besides chicken, a typical menu for the Spring Festival Eve dinner in Guangdong includes fish, shrimp, pork knuckle, pork tongue, dried oysters and rice cake.

Why? Because these ingredients' names sound like "lucky" words in Cantonese, the dialect of Guangdong.

Like in Mandarin, the word for fish sounds like "surplus" and the word for cake sounds like "high" in Cantonese. Therefore, a dish made using fish symbolizes a new year with lots of foods and money.

A dish made using rice cake means you want the children to grow taller and the adults to get promoted at their workplaces.

Only Cantonese-speaking people understand the "lucky" words which sound like the ones for shrimp, pork knuckle and dried oysters because the Mandarin versions are different.