The Western world tends to celebrate New Year’s with liquid treats. However, the Lunar New Year is approaching, and that requires traditional New Year’s candy. When my wife told me of the candy tradition, I asked her to get some from the Oriental market to sample. None of the chocolate or peppermint nonsense, I tried kumquat, banana, coconut-durian, and sweet beans. The beans, while traditional, are not exactly candy. They are beans.

The candy is nicely packages in round plastic containers with faceted lids. The name of the product is provided in Chinese, English, and Vietnamese. The candies are individually wrapped and about an inch and a quarter long.

The prize for most attractive goes to the Flying Elephant brand bright orange candied kumquats.

Kumquats are small sour citrus fruits. The flavor holds up to the sugar onslaught to make a tasty candy that I think just about anyone would like.

The proclaimed banana chewy candy tastes like ginger and sesame. There may be some banana in there, but I didn’t recognize it. This is a more complex flavor combination, and my favorite of the four.

Durian is the famous stinky tropical fruit. The coconut flavor comes on first in the taffy-like candy, then the durian joins with its fragrant suggestion of a natural gas leak. It is not super-powerful, fortunately, and ends up being sort of intriguing. I don’t think it would be a hit with the kids. Forget about it for Halloween, unless you have a cruel sense of humor.

Sweet azuki beans are a popular dessert ingredient in Japan and China. The beans show up as a paste filling for baked goods, a dessert soup with oranges, and as the candy-like sugared beans. They taste remarkably like beans with sugar. If that seems odd, note that New Englanders have long eaten baked beans cooked with molasses and brown sugar.

This year, the Lunar New Year is the day after Valentine’s Day, so you can stock up for either event. It’s a chance to break out of the chocolate rut … but maybe not with the durian.