A reunion dinner is held on New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...

 of the Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year – often called Chinese Lunar New Year although it actually is lunisolar – is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is an all East and South-East-Asia celebration...

, during which family members get together to celebrate.

Typical menu

The New Year's Eve dinner is very large and traditionally includes chicken and pork. Fish (魚, yú) is also included, but intentionally not finished, and the remaining fish is stored overnight. The reason for this stems from a pun

Pun

The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...

, as the Chinese phrase 年年有魚/餘; (nián nián yǒu yú, or "every year there is fish/leftover") is a homophone for phrases which mean "be blessed every year" or "have profit every year". Similarly, a type of black hair-like algae, "fat choy"(髮菜, fǎ cài, literally "hair vegetable" in Cantonese), is also featured in many dishes since its name sounds similar to "prosperity"(發財, fā cái). Hakka

Hakka people

The Hakka , sometimes Hakka Han, are Han Chinese who speak the Hakka language and have links to the provincial areas of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Fujian in China....

will serve "kiu nyuk" 扣肉 and "ngiong tiu fu" 釀豆腐.

The belief is that having one will lead to the other, as the phrases sound similar to one another.