Nian gao, sometimes translated as year cake or New Year cake or Chinese New Year's cake, is a food prepared from glutinous rice flour and consumed in Chinese cuisine. It is also simply known as "rice cake". While it can be eaten all year round, traditionally it is most popular during the Chinese New Year. It is considered good luck to eat nian gao during this time of the year because nian gao (年糕) is a homonym for "higher year" or "grow every year" (年高), which means "a more prosperous year". The character 年 is literally translated as "year", and the character 糕 (gāo) is literally translated as "cake" and is identical in sound to the character 高, meaning "tall" or "high". In Mandarin, Nian gao (年糕) also is an exact homonym of "sticky cake" (黏糕／粘糕), the character 黏／粘 (nián) meaning "sticky".

Vietnamese cuisine encompasses the foods and beverages originated from Vietnam. Meals feature a combination of five fundamental tastes : sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy. The distinctive nature of each dish reflects one or more elements, which are also based around a five-pronged philosophy. Vietnamese recipes use ingredients like lemongrass, ginger, mint, Vietnamese mint, long coriander, Saigon cinnamon, bird's eye chili, lime, and Thai basil leaves. Traditional Vietnamese cooking has often been characterised as using fresh ingredients, not using much dairy or oil, having interesting textures, and making use of herbs and vegetables. The cuisine is also low in sugar and is almost always naturally gluten-free, as many of the dishes are rice-based instead of wheat-based, made with rice noodles, papers and flour. Vietnamese cuisine is strongly influenced not only by the cuisines of neighboring China, Cambodia and Laos, but also by French cuisine due to French colonial rule over the region from 1887 to 1954.