Sharks' fin, bird's nest: Treat for the New Year
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-28 10:28

Picture this: Lobster cooked eight ways. Sharks' fin bathed in a rich brown sauce. Stewed bird's nest sweetened with apricots. Abalone braised until tender.

Now, the bill: 198,000 yuan (US$24,500, euro20,000).

As China's economy booms people turn to restaurants for new year banquet at the Spring Festival, which falls on January 29 this year. Just a few years ago the Chinese usually cook new year feasts at home. [file photo]

The Lao Zhengxing restaurant in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou has taken culinary decadence to new heights with its Chinese New Year banquet menu _ a mix of exorbitantly priced ingredients and flashy cooking topped off with a dash of self-promotion.

"Our boss loves good food and has served it for more than 40 years," said the manager, who would give only his surname, Li. "But I don't deny we are also aiming to get publicity for our restaurant."

Just a few years ago, Chinese spent the Lunar New Year _ their most celebrated holiday _ cooking feasts at home. But now, increasingly wealthy and busy, they are splurging on elaborate restaurant banquets. Eateries like Lao Zhengxing with special New Year menus are benefiting.

"It is the time for families to gather," said Bian Jiang, secretary-general of the China Cuisine Association. "People expect and enjoy higher standards of food, teas, wines and services during the New Year."

The rush to book a table now starts as early as December and meals range from hundreds to tens of thousands of yuan (dollars, euros) _ fortunes in a country where incomes average about $300 a year in the countryside and $1,000 in cities.

"People are getting lazier and they have less time to cook," said Liu Jiang, a 43-year-old homemaker from Beijing who has reserved a table for 12 at a roast duck restaurant on Saturday, the eve of the Lunar New Year.

"It's so much easier to go to out _ especially if you have as many people as we do."

Dishes at a New Year's eve reunion dinner are full of symbolic meaning: noodles represent longevity, fish for wealth and round foods, like meat balls, emphasize togetherness. The menu usually has one or two high-priced delicacies like abalone or sharks' fin thrown in to make the occasion more memorable.

The Lao Zhengxing banquet features a soup with a hair-like black sea moss whose name in Mandarin sounds the same as the phrase "get rich."

Among the other rarities offered _ a "three-headed" Japanese abalone, which costs 20,000 yuan (US$2,400, euro1,800) each and 50-year-old Pu'er tea from southern Yunnan province.

The price is so high, said Li, the manager, because the ingredients are so rare and come from the owner's private collection.

"We have enough only for about 20 to 24 people," Li said. "It will take at least another five years to collect them again."

So far, there's been one taker for the banquet, a Hong Kong businessman who is an old friend of the restaurant owner, Li said, refusing to provide any more details.

Quan Ju De, a popular roast duck chain in Beijing, is attracting more takers, with its most-expensive holiday menu, which feeds 10 for 8,666 yuan (US$1,000, euro840), a play on numbers considered lucky by the Chinese.

"We're fully booked," said a manager who refused to give her name, but promoted another holiday menu of Australian scallops, bird's nest and of course, duck.

Quan Ju De packs them in: One branch seats 900 people and is filled with white-cloth topped tables and velvet red chairs, with bunches of firecrackers on pillars. Photos of famous customers line the walls _ Bush, Arafat, Yanni, Castro and Carreras.

The Chinese zodiac moves in a 12-year cycle named after animals, starting with the Year of the Rat and ending with the Year of the Pig, which falls in 2007. According to that series, this is the Year of the Dog.

And is it unlucky to eat dog in the Year of the Dog?

Not in the northeastern province of Jilin. "The people of Jilin have the tradition of eating dog in winter since dog meat is good for the health," said a man who answered the telephone at Chaoxian Restaurant in the provincial city of Jilin.

"No one has ever complained about eating dogs in the Year of the Dog," he said. "If so, we cannot eat pigs next year, right?"