Fresh start, old tradition

Jing Yaa Tang roast duck. [Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily]

To catch the eyes of customers, hotels' nian gao are made into delicate auspicious shapes, such as a fish, or a shoe-shaped gold ingot with different flavors, priced about 200 yuan for a gift box. The Peninsula hotel in Beijing just opened a series of cooking classes on the pastry art of nian gao.

A few years ago, says Li Dong, 40, a Beijing native and chief chef of Jing Yaa Tang at the stylish luxury hotel The Opposite House, "a New Year banquet at top hotels wouldn't seem to give a lot of 'face' if without shark fins, abalone, and other expensive stuff. But now, it's going down to cultural and creative items."

Jiang Yaa Tang's Year of the Sheep dinner menu is priced at 248 yuan per person for a feast of 12 set dishes. "The price is more affordable to common people's wallet compared to our last year's deal," he says.

The set menu will include the restaurant's signature Beijing roast duck, and traditional Chinese New Year's food with a twist, as such steamed cod with mushrooms and pickled vegetable. Having a fish dish in a traditional Chinese banquet symbolizes abundance.

"I think it's a process when more people tend to care about the folk culture," Li says. "Having had delicious and healthy food, we now turn our attention to something relating to tradition, and a sense of rusticity."

Chef Fan at Jewel restaurant says Westin is promoting a folk food series based on the 24 solar terms in Chinese lunar calendar throughout 2015. "We have just celebrated two of them: La Ba festival on Jan 27, and Li Chun on Feb 4."

"On La Ba Festival, an important day during the Major Cold, the 24th solar term, we provided free La Ba porridge to our guests." That festival is celebrated on the eighth day of the 12th month in the lunar calendar, when people usually have porridge that has eight (ba) kinds of mixed grains, a tradition since ancient times.

Having the porridge on this day is said to pay tribute to the land, show thanks for a good harvest at year's end, and pin hopes on the next year. Legend also has it that La Ba marks the day in which Sakyauni, the founder of Buddhism, reached enlightenment and became immortal. People would have porridge on this day in memory of their ancestors.

For Li Chun, meaning "the beginning of spring" in the Chinese lunar calendar, the chefs at Jewel presented a pancake set meal for 68 yuan which included pancakes, saut��ed shredded pork with green chives, sauteed egg, wok-fried bean sprouts with black vinegar, and marinated pork knuckle. At that time, people have the traditional custom of eating spring pancakes, a practice called "biting the spring", symbolizing eating something new to welcome the start of a new season.