There are lots of food, from raw to ready-to-eat, delicious to acquired taste, the common to the weird, that are particularly associated with the Lunar New Year.
There are air-dried strips of pork bellies 臘肉, sausages filled with pork 臘腸, duck liver 潤腸, goose liver, … All excellent.
Dried oysters. Expensive.
Seeds from watermelons, pumpkins, sunflowers, …
“Hair vegetable 髮菜”, long-thread moss - actually a kind of bacteria, I was informed.
Cashews, pistachios, walnuts, almonds, … Dried scallops, dried mushrooms, …
New Year cakes 年糕, sesame ball 煎堆， …
And then my favourite: deep-fried sweet dumplings （角仔）. Lunar New Year is not complete without 角仔（油角）.
Food is such an essential part of Chinese culture. There is a warm, fuzzy feeling whenever these things appear in the market, in anticipation of Lunar New Year. My grandmother, uncles, aunts, many childhood friends and scenes come back to mind.
Many of these foods will disappear as soon as the New Year Festival is over, not to be seen again until a year later. Each year the foods come back, perhaps more expensive than before. But life is not the same. A little is lost each time, never to come again.
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