Reunion Dinner: A Chinese Symbol of Family

Explore the most important festive meal in China and understand Family in the context of traditional cuisine

Caitlyn Cui

What is A Reunion Dinner

Reunion Dinner is the family reunion dinner held on the New Year’s Eve of Chinese New Year. It is the most important meal of the entire year, as all family members would get together back in their hometown to celebrate no matter where they work or live. Chinese New Year abides by the lunar calendar: it usually takes place in late January or early February; Reunion Dinner is preceded by a small worship ceremony to the Chinese gods and ancestors — people leave the sorrows and troubles in the past year, and make good wishes to move forward in the incoming New Year. Their wishes are only shared between themselves and the kindest ancestors who are most likely to respond to them; people may ask for making big fortunes in business, achieve academic success, or good health for everyone in the family.

This big reunion happens only once every year — it fully demonstrates the mutual respect and love within one big family and the reunion pulls everyone closer together. Besides spiritual comfort, Reunion Dinner is sadly the only time for the elderly to see their children and grandchildren who live in another city coming back. They are excited to see if younger generations in the family are doing well, and that all the caring and efforts they dedicated to the family in the past are not in vain. The cultural implications behind Reunion Dinner are beyond family traditions, but also symbolizing the Chinese definition of family in the context of festival cuisine.

Implications Behind Certain Dishes

Many traditional dishes served on the Reunion Dinner table have blessings and implications for the New Year behind the composition and choices of the ingredients. Since Reunion Dinner is the last meal of the past year, and the first meal of the New Year, people are at the crossing of the bright, new, and hopefully promising future and the past which may be filled with regrets and sadness. Chinese people emphasize on the pun that can be made from each dish as the guiding light leading them towards the New Year. Some interesting implications behind certain dishes are shown as follows.

(More examples are listed in the map tour.)

The following video is the preparation of a Reunion Dinner by a famous Chinese YouTuber, Ziqi Li; the button below is a link to the episode “Celebrating Chinese New Year” in the documentary series A Bite of China. Both videos illustrate how Chinese people celebrate Lunar New Year by busy cooking for their families. Although some of the traditions shown in the documentary episode are no longer commonly practiced, audiences can still gain a sense of what it is like to spend the Chinese New Year with families. Reunion Dinner is the bond between people who are working hard and striving for their career away from hometown throughout the year and the elderly who stay behind and care about their grown-up kids.

（年夜大餐）NYE dinner, wish you all happy and health|Liziqi channel

A Small Tour From the North to the South

A Map of China -- tour around to see what does Reunion Dinner look like in these six places!

The Earliest Reunion Dinner

Reunion Dinner in Chinese Dynasties

As early as in the Northern and Southern Dynasty (420-589 AD), Lin Zong had recorded in his journal Jingchu Suishiji to describe how people would gather together on New Year’s Eve to have a Reunion Dinner. Zong wrote, “on the night of New Year’s Eve, families prepare delicious food and come together to welcome the New Year. Everyone gathered to drink wine and have a good time for the Reunion Dinner.” (岁暮，家家具肴蔌诣宿岁之位，以迎新年。相聚酣饮。) The earliest records for dumplings also appeared around the same time: as Zhitui Yan wrote in his book Yanshi Jiaxun, “dumplings from nowadays are shaped like the crescent moon; they are commonly eaten around the country.” （今之馄饨, 形如偃月, 天下通食。) However, no evidence had proved the link between dumplings and Reunion Dinner were established. 

Later in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), dumplings were included as one of the dishes on the dining tables on New Year. According to Zhuozhongzhi by Ruoyu Liu, in the court, “since the early morning on the first day of New Year, (people) would drink pepper wine and eat water dimsum (dumplings). Some wrapped a coin or two inside the dumplings, and whoever got it would be blessed for one year. People would knock on others’ doors to give New Year’s blessings — this is called celebrating New Year.” (正月初一五更起, 饮柏椒酒, 吃水点心。或暗包银钱一二于内,得之者以卜一岁之吉,是日亦互相拜祝,名曰贺新年也。) It was not until the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) that people started eating dumplings on New Year’s Eve. Dumplings, or “jiaozi” in Chinese, was named after the meaning of transitioning to the New Year and family reunion. In Anthology of Petty Matters in Qing by Ke Xu, he documented dumplings as “fillings in the middle with outer flour wrapping; it could be either steamed or fried; it was called water dumplings when cooked in boiling water and accompanied with soup. (中有馅,或谓之粉角; 而蒸食煎食皆可, 以水煮之而有汤叫水饺。)

A Traditional Reunion Dinner for Families in the Qing Dynasty

The types of meat served on Reunion Dinner were limited. Starting from Western Jin (265-317) and throughout Song Dynasties (960-1276), the Northern nomadic people travelled down to the South and expanded their grazing area to feed sheep. Sheep was abundant and exceeded pork to become the most commonly-used type of meat on the table. Cattle and cows were used mainly for ploughing in agriculture; as a result, the authorities prohibited the slaughtering of cattle and consumption of beef. Beef remained a luxury after the laws were removed. Furthermore, fish was popular across all social classes; fish was cooked in many different ways both in court and at homes of the general public. (Xu, no page) People’s eating habits were becoming more similar to contemporary preferences around the Qing Dynasty. In Report Files of the Qing Imperial Household Department, documents from the Imperial Household Department suggested that the emperors and the royal families started to include pork, duck, chicken, goose, sheep, deer, and fish in their Reunion Dinner. Different parts of the pig were made into different dishes, ranging from pork belly to pork intestines.

Vegetables were rarely included in the menus of Reunion Dinner in this period due to technological reasons. It was difficult to preserve fresh vegetables during winter without useful technological tools and methods. Greenhouse vegetables first appeared in Song Dynasty; the agricultural improvement introduced more dishes to Reunion Dinner. Besides the court, rich families would have a vegetables combo served for Reunion Dinner — the combo included garlic, baby garlic, leek, rape, and cilantro (all tasted a little bit spicy, therefore the combo was also known as the spicy-five-palette “五辛盘”.) Some poems written in Song Dynasty depicted this special vegetables combo: in Chuquan Li’s poem Nanxiangzi, he described the dishes on the table (with spicy-five-palette included) and expressed his wishes for a better New Year.

Large Gatherings for Reunion Dinner

In ancient times, it would be difficult for the rich families and even the emperor himself to have a nice and sumptuous Reunion Dinner despite their wealth. Technological developments in food preservation had added more choices to the table as time went by. Nevertheless, people embraced the New Year in those rather simple Reunion Dinner with joy and excitement. The whole family gathered around the table and enjoyed the meal they dedicatedly prepared.

The house was lit by light, and the family sat around the dining table. The elderly were seated in the middle, men and women seated on the left and right. People frequently raised their goblets and enjoyed the wine. (Meng, no page)

Reunion Dinner in the Vulnerable Years of China

Chinese people finally sent off the ages of hunger and years of struggle in the late 1970s. People started to watch CCTV New Year’s Gala during family reunions. Reunion Dinner was back on the table, with a greater variety of dishes like hand-made dumplings, fish, chicken, and other signature dishes inherited from family recipes. A unique way of celebrating Chinese New Year with families was gradually adopted — after all those years, China was rejuvenated and ready to step on international stages. Chinese families stayed together, and their bonds remained strong.

Chinese Symbol of the Family

Preparing for a successful Reunion Dinner is never easy. Cooking for the entire family requires teamwork among all family members, which unites them together. It’s worth noticing that people from different parts of China choose different ingredients that represent local cuisine as is illustrated in the map above; even people living in neighboring regions might have different cooking methods or styles when preparing the same dish. Family recipes for Reunion Dinner can be viewed as a crucial part of family inheritance passed down from generation to generation. Reunion Dinner thus becomes a symbol of the continuity of family lineages. 

Reunion Dinner in the past versus at present: Held at home V.S. Dine in restaurants

With the development of technology and great economic progress, the way people celebrate Chinese New Year in the 20th and 21st centuries is very different from historical records. Red Pocket, which is another Spring Festival tradition where parents will give children a red paper envelop with money inside, is gradually becoming virtual; critics argue that it’s becoming more difficult for a large family to gather around the dinner table and chat with each other without staring at smartphones. More and more families are giving up cooking the Reunion Dinner themselves to give the elderly a break; instead, they would order from local restaurants or dine out to spend their New Year’s Eve. There are no correct answers towards the best way to have Reunion Dinner; nevertheless, Reunion Dinner stays as the symbol for family for people who are Chinese or have Chinese heritages. 

"带我回家"-可口可乐中国广告 Coca Cola Chinese TV commercial

Advertisers noticed this special representation of family in terms of Reunion Dinner. Coca-Cola added the elements of Reunion Dinner and Chinese New Year in its 2003 commercial, “Bring Me Home.” This advertising campaign succeeded for the reason that it appealed to the sense of family reunion and smartly inserted Coca-Cola products in Reunion Dinner. It can be inferred that Reunion Dinner is recognized by the West as a cultural symbol of parental love and family togetherness.

 

Back in the darkest ages, people would leave their hometown for major cities to get higher salaries and feed their whole families. Reunion Dinner was the only time they could get back to their loved ones and relax from all the pressures at work. As this generation of people got married and had children in major cities, part of their roots were no longer in their poorer, less developed hometowns. With economic improvements, the gap between urban and suburban areas is shortened; after living their fast, exciting life in the cities, spending some time with families means taking a break and slowing down their pace. All the blessings and implications hidden in various dishes of Reunion Dinner are mostly about success in life and happy reunions with the family — they are not superstitions, but the secretly embedded New Year wishes from the elderly to the younger generations when they cook. Chinese culture has an emphasis on reunions: whenever we get together as a family to have Reunion Dinner, it means that we are all healthy and ready for a better New Year — we, as a family, are sure to overcome all the barriers in front. These best blessings and cultural meanings are conveyed through the power of cuisine.

Bibliography

Lin, Zong. Jingchu Suishiji 荆楚岁时记, South Liang.

Zhitui, Yan. Yanshi Jiaxun 颜氏家训, North Qi.

Ruoyu, Liu. Zhuozhongzhi 酌中志, Ming Dynasty.

Mengxin, Xu. Sanchaobeimeng Huibian 三朝北盟会编, Southern Song Dynasty.

Ke, Xu. Anthology of Petty Matter in Qing 清稗类钞, Qing Dynasty.

Reporting Files of the Qing Imperial Household Department, Qing Dynasty. 

Chuquan, Li. Nanxiangzi 南乡子, Southern Song Dynasty.

Yuanlao, Meng. Dongjing Menghualu 东京梦华录, Southern Song Dynasty.

Shiqiu, Liang. New Year Scenarios at Peking 北平年景. Yunnan people’s Publishing House, 1986

Jin, Li. Years of Hunger. Hunan People’s Publishing House Co., Ltd. 2001

Jialu, Shen. Spring Festivals in Shanghai. Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House. 1992

“Reunion Dinner.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunion_dinner. 

“Poon Choi.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poon_choi.

Media

  • Traditional Family Reunion in Qing, https://images.app.goo.gl/T7cTUEqMz5SuypjMA
  • Republic of China, https://images.app.goo.gl/Frudwve3h12CXiFY8
  • Scarcity in food resources, https://pic4.zhimg.com/v2-f372c8506be682caeb969e8602a43603_r.jpg
  • Reunion Dinner at present, https://images.app.goo.gl/xR3hoNeGfC8Wc4PGA

*Videos are internally linked.*

Reunion Dinner in Chinese Dynasties

A Traditional Reunion Dinner for Families in the Qing Dynasty

Large Gatherings for Reunion Dinner

Reunion Dinner in the past versus at present: Held at home V.S. Dine in restaurants