The annual New Year's Eve dinner is a big meal that the whole family should mobilize. Every household will put on dishes that they are reluctant to eat on weekdays, or auspicious dishes. This is also the expectation of a better life in the coming year. On the New Year's Eve, what you eat is joy, what you taste is affection, and what you smell in the delicious rice is the taste of home. The annual New Year's Eve dinner is extremely important to China people. The whole family respected and loved each other, and sat around the dining table happily.

On New Year's Eve, there is a fish at every table. Fish is homophonic, and there is "surplus" every year, which is auspicious and festive. There are many fish dishes in the north and south of China, such as "boiled crucian carp" in Jiangsu cuisine, "fried bighead carp" in Wusuli cuisine, "claw crucian carp" in Sichuan cuisine, "slippery bass ball" in Guangdong cuisine, "fish in Qiyang basin" in Hunan cuisine, "pickled fish" in Beijing cuisine, Tianjin cuisine and "North Korean whitebait" in the northeast.