Laba Festival is a traditional festival in China, but it is often celebrated in the north. Southerners rarely celebrated this festival before. However, with the intensification of personnel flow, especially a large number of northerners came to the south for winter, the custom of celebrating Laba Festival was brought to the south. Therefore, some southerners began to celebrate this festival. So what do you eat on Laba Festival in the South? Let's take a look at what southerners eat on Laba Festival.

Drink sweet potato soup in southern Laba Festival

Sweet potato soup in southern winter is also a common soup in Guangdong folk festivals. It is delicious, moist and delicious, invigorating spleen, benefiting qi and promoting fluid production, and is suitable for men, women and children.

As the saying goes, "La Qi La Ba freezes the chin", so on Laba Day, every family drinks Laba porridge to prevent the chin from freezing. About the origin of Laba porridge, it is generally believed that it originated from Buddhism, so Laba porridge is also called "Buddha porridge", and some folks also call Laba porridge "Fangfengzhou". It is said that drinking this porridge can keep out the cold.

Method of making wax gourd soup with eight treasures in Laba Festival

Raw materials: a piece of wax gourd, a small handful of Chinese cabbage, 51g of coix seed, 25g of lotus seeds, lentils, kidney beans, ginkgo and millet grains.

seasoning: vegetarian soup, salt and sesame oil (optional) are appropriate.

Preparation: Soak Coicis Semen, lotus seeds, lentils, kidney beans, ginkgo and millet seeds with clear water in advance until they swell. Wash the wax gourd (don't peel it) and dice it. Wash the cabbage and cut it into pieces for later use.

Step

1. Put all the soaked ingredients into the sand pot, add vegetarian soup and appropriate amount of water, and then simmer slowly with slow fire until soft and rotten.

2. After all the ingredients in the casserole are soft and rotten, put in the prepared wax gourd and Chinese cabbage, turn off the heat by boiling over high fire, then season with salt and sesame oil and serve.

what to eat on Laba Festival in southern China

Guangdong

Laba Festival is one of the traditional festivals in China. On this day, people worship their ancestors and the gods of heaven and earth, praying for a bumper harvest and good luck, and there is a custom of eating Laba porridge everywhere. After the prevalence of Buddhism, the Buddha's enlightenment day merged with Laba Festival, and famous temples such as Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou and Hanshan Temple in Suzhou still offer porridge on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. In Guangdong, the atmosphere of Laba Festival is very light.

Why don't Cantonese celebrate Laba Festival? This is related to the geographical location and the living habits of Guangfu people since ancient times. The ancient Lingnan water town has not yet been developed, and the life of the indigenous people is not mainly based on farming. They all make a living by fishing for shrimp and fish on the water, and no one cultivates the beans and grains needed to cook Laba porridge, so there will be no custom of eating these things.

Laba is also celebrated in Guangdong, but it is mainly in the Pearl River Delta area, which is a custom brought by Hakkas from the north. However, the materials used to make Laba porridge are different, such as millet and red dates in the north, and glutinous rice, lily and lotus seeds in the south. If you are too lazy to make it, Roy's love ice cream will be available!

Fujian

The traditional Laba porridge in Fuzhou has an interesting feature: a little lion made of several fruits is put on the porridge to ward off evil spirits. In the past, people in Fuzhou generally began to make Laba porridge on the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, and stewed it carefully all night. The next morning, Laba porridge was cooked.

Some people will carve the fruit into various shapes first, and the most interesting thing is to make a "fruit lion". Crispy jujube is peeled and dried to make a lion's body, half walnut kernel as a lion's head, peach kernel as a lion's foot, almond as a lion's tail, and then all parts are glued together with syrup and placed on porridge noodles. If the bowl is large, you can also put a pair of lions to take the meaning of "avoiding evil and being auspicious". In the temple courtyard, there are also small shapes such as the Eight Immortals, Luohan and Shouxinggong made of colored foods such as jujube paste, red bean paste and hawthorn.

after laba porridge is cooked, worship the gods and ancestors in the early morning, and then give it to relatives, friends and neighbors before noon. In the end, the whole family will share the food, leaving a little, which is a sign of "more than one year". In the cold winter, drinking a bowl of steaming, sweet and delicious Laba porridge to drive away the cold and warm the stomach is also beneficial to human health.

Jiangxi

Laba Festival is the first festival before the Spring Festival, and Nanchang people regard Laba as a prelude to the Spring Festival. Starting from Laba, every household should prepare peanuts, melon seeds, cured meat and buy new year's goods. There is a folk saying that "eat Laba porridge and look forward to the new year".

"You don't have to choose the Laba day, so you can live a long and prosperous life." In Nanchang, Laba is also a traditional auspicious day. On this day, besides drinking Laba porridge, Nanchang people often hold Laba weddings such as betrothal, daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law.

In ancient times, there were "Nuo" in addition to offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors. Nuo is a unique culture in Jiangxi province, and it is a ceremony to expel epidemic ghosts. In Nanchang, in order to inherit and develop Nuo culture, Honggutan New District has invested in the construction of Nuo Culture Park. According to historical records, performers usually wear masks and pretend to be King Kong, Lux and Fang Equal, holding knives and holding lots, and everyone beats drums to make noise to drive away ghosts and epidemics. This is also called wax drums to drive away epidemics. It is said that children can be safe and healthy. Later, it changed its form among the people, and it became eating fried beans and wheat, etc. Both beans and wheat should be fried and fried, and then let the children eat some, which is called "biting ghosts".

Hunan

On Laba Festival, temples make porridge from fragrant valleys and fruits for the Buddha, which is called Laba porridge and is popular among the people. Changsha and other places not only eat laba porridge, but also make laba beans, which has become one of the home-cooked dishes. In the countryside, glutinous rice, bacon, red dates and walnuts are often used as laba rice on this day, and laba beans are also the best on this day.

In Changsha, there is also "La Drum Singing, Spring Grass Growing". The proverb "La instigates, farmers are excited", so the eighth day of December is commonly known as "La Ri". On this day, many people will worship their ancestors, and the cooked Laba porridge will be worshipped first and then distributed to their families. The leftover Laba porridge is also preserved for a few days, which is a good sign of "more than one year".

Laba porridge in Changsha is generally sweet porridge, but pickled Laba beans are basically salty. In southern Hunan and other places, Laba has the custom of eating fermented bean curd and making fermented bean curd. In Xinhua and Xiangxi, there is also the custom of beating drums on Laba Festival, which means exorcising ghosts and avoiding epidemics.

Guangxi

In Liu Cun, Longji Town, Longsheng Autonomous County, Guangxi, the local Panyao people have the custom of making Ciba on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. The local Yao people soaked and steamed glutinous rice, put it in a stone trough and mashed it into mud, and then kneaded it to make Ciba. Ciba cakes are delicious and delicious, and are deeply loved by local people.

Zhejiang

People in Zhejiang usually cook Laba porridge with walnut kernel, pine nuts, lotus seeds, red dates, longan meat, lychee meat, etc., which is sweet and delicious. It is said that this porridge cooking method has been passed down from Nanjing.

Jiangsu

People in Jiangsu eat Laba porridge in sweet and salty ways. Add water chestnut, walnut kernel, pine nuts, Euryale euryales, red dates, chestnuts, fungus, vegetables, Flammulina velutipes, etc. into Laba porridge. If salty porridge is cooked, just add vegetables and oil to it.

Sichuan

Laba porridge is made in a variety of ways, sweet, salty and spicy, while rural people eat more salty porridge, which is mainly made of soybeans, peanuts, diced meat, white radish and carrots. Strangers come here to taste, although do as the Romans do, but it is difficult to get used to it. Nowadays, there are many people in cities who eat sweet porridge, which can be called different flavors.