There are a lot of potential opportunities this year, but you will experience some hardship, or encounter obstacles in trying to achieve your goals. Then, New Year's Day is spent visiting with extended family, a symbolic act of leaving the house to greet the New Year. Many businesses, including a good number of Chinese restaurants, close on both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Like a homing pigeon, she ritually sojourns from Manhattan to be with her parents in San Francisco for Chinese New Year. Another requisite dish that capitalizes on puns is fish.
Fish is considered a favorable food for other reasons.
According to Young, the Chinese value cooking, then eating, a live fish, especially one that puts up a valiant fight to its delicious end in the pot. Its tenacity represents immortality, enabling you to metaphorically swallow the ultimate in long life and good fortune. However, if you're not up to speed on Chinese word play, ordering at a Chinese restaurant during New Year's can seem daunting. I was lucky enough to find several specialists to guide me through the plethora of symbolically significant dishes. At Shanghai Tide restaurant in New York City, owner Wing Nin Chan offered special prix fixe Chinese New Year's menus from Jan. 20 to Jan. 30, with a decidedly Shanghai slant.