Chinese New Year Food in Sichuan: What Locals Eat |Chengdu-expat.com

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January 27, 2025

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Dining, Food, News

Food plays a central role in all celebrations across China, especially when it comes to Chinese New Year food in Sichuan. Unlike Western staples like Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas ham, festival dishes in China vary widely by region. Each area highlights different foods, and many families and villages have their own unique traditions beyond regional customs.

This article comes from the archives of our favorite Sichuan food writer, Jordan Porter (no, not you Dunlop), who sadly no longer lives in the city.

Discover how to pig out like a local this Spring Festival with Jordan’s guide to Chinese New Year food in Sichuan:

In Sichuan, lunch, not dinner, serves as the most important meal during celebrations. This meal also marks the time for drinking. Lunch often features a more elaborate spread, but the day doesn’t end there. After lunch, people usually take an afternoon break filled with majiang, sunflower seeds, tea, and sometimes cigarettes. Later, everyone returns to the table for a more casual dinner.

If you join a Chinese New Year celebration in Sichuan, these dishes are common examples of the Chinese New Year food in Sichuan you can expect to enjoy:

Sausages & Smoked Meat

You have seen spiced, cured sausages and smoked pork bellies and ribs hanging around the city since the weather got cold. These meats truly shine during the New Year feast, a highlight of Chinese New Year food in Sichuan. Each family makes their own sausages using recipes passed down through generations. The rituals of curing, drying, and smoking also play a key role in preparing for the New Year. Families serve these meats steamed, boiled, or on their own, sliced thinly as a meat platter. Serving an abundance of meat symbolizes prosperity. Overall, meat plays a central role in the annual celebrations. In Sichuan tradition, smoked meat and sausages hold a special, sacred place. Their rich flavors perfectly capture the spirit of the Spring Festival here.

Chicken 鸡肉

Traditionally, during Chinese New Year, families would slaughter a chicken and spread its blood in front of their doorway to repel evil spirits. Then, they cooked the chicken to eat. While this ritual still happens in rural areas, most city families skip the slaughter and go straight to cooking. In Chengdu, people commonly serve chicken cold and mixed in chili oil (凉拌鸡) or red-braised with seasonal garlic scapes. Some families prefer a chicken stew or soup (炖鸡), and others serve both a male and a female chicken. No matter how it’s prepared, chicken, usually a one-year-old rooster in Sichuan, always appears on the table.

Fish 鱼

The word for fish, Yu 鱼, sounds like the word for surplus or profit, Yu 余. Eating fish during Chinese New Year represents ending the year with a surplus. This tradition is part of Chinese New Year food in Sichuan and across China. The fish must stay whole, but different places prepare it in various ways. In Sichuan, people usually serve it spicy or cooked in douban (豆瓣) sauce. Sometimes it’s boiled, steamed, or fried, depending on local taste.

Surou 酥肉

Deep fried, spiced, fatty pork is prepared by each family and served during the feast. It can be served crispy on its own with a side of crushed chili, though most commonly its served in a soup – which makes it not crispy at all, but still delicious. Often made en masse, it also serves as an easy gift when visiting other families or family members along side strings of sausages and bags of smoked meat.

Dumplings 饺子

Preparing dumplings 饺子 for the New Year is primarily a thing of North China, and it doesn’t feature prominently in Sichuanese traditions (Read more about that here). Sichuan is, however, a land of immigrants and many people here are of northern decent, and so its not uncommon that families across the province (and country) still practice this tradition. Dumplings, however, are usually eaten on the last day of the lunar year, and not during the New Years Day feast itself.

Baijiu 白酒 and Boiled Beer 煮啤酒

As with celebrations across the world, for many families drinking also plays a role in the festivities. Whole families gather together and toast to the fortune of the family and things to come in the year ahead. This is the time to bring out that fancy bottle of WuLiangYe or MaoTai you’ve been saving up and enjoy it with loved ones. The flavors also compliment the sausages and smoked meat very nicely. In cooler areas, and for the evening meal, a ‘mulled beer’ 煮啤酒 may also be made. Local beer is boiled with ginger, goji berries, rock sugar and fermented rice for a warm, boozey beverage that keeps you peppy in the cool of the evening.