The New Year’s Eve reunion dinner, but what’s the story behind it and what’s the hidden meaning?

The reunion dinner, also known as the New Year’s Eve dinner, is a banquet for family reunion. Its meaning is to give people who have been traveling around for a year an opportunity to reunite with their families. It means good luck, wealth, perfection, and reunion.

This New Year’s Eve dinner is also called “family dinner” and is a family banquet that people attach great importance to. As the saying goes: "Hit a thousand, scold ten thousand, and have a meal at thirty." Nowadays, more and more young people are going out to work, more and more middle-aged people are running for a living, and there are also children in other places. Studying, whether in ancient times or today, is a common phenomenon among the public. Therefore, the New Year’s Eve dinner is also called the reunion dinner, which is a symbol of family and friends sitting together to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, and to be reunited. So for this reason, there are usually chickens (meaning wealth), fish (meaning abundance every year), oysters (meaning good market), nostoc (meaning fortune), yuba (meaning abundance), and lotus roots (meaning wisdom) on the banquet. ), lettuce (means wealth), raw garlic (means calculation), etc. for good luck.

The origin of the New Year’s Eve dinner begins with a legend. In ancient times, there was a monster called "Nian". When there was little food in winter, he would come to the village to hurt people and animals. At this time, people would be very afraid and would run to distant places to avoid Nian. Later, everyone discovered that the Nian beast was afraid of three things: color, fire and loud noises, so people discussed countermeasures. When the Nian beast came, people painted their doors red, put up door paintings, lit fires, and Banging pots and pans makes noise. Nian was very scared when he arrived in the village, so he ran away and never came to the village again. In order to celebrate that everyone no longer has to leave their homes to avoid the Nian beast, the villagers retained the same custom at this time of year, and called people who had left home to go home for a dinner to celebrate. This is where the custom of the New Year's Eve dinner came from.