The biggest event of Chinese New Year’s Eve is the Reunion Dinner, a night where families gather and eat food that bring good luck for the upcoming year. This was the first time in over a decade that I had this reunion with my family (too bad my brother isn’t present), so it was quite a nice experience for me. Our dinner was not super elaborate, as we also visited the Reunion Dinner of another family.
The dishes are thought to bring good luck as they phonetically sound like prosperous words or visually resemble good items. Some examples: fish (魚) which sounds like the word for abundance (餘), year cake (年糕) which resembles yearly rise (年年高昇), and dumplings as they look like old Chinese currency.