My birthplace, Taicang, Suzhou, was named after the establishment of the granary by the King of Wu. It has been a place where people gather since ancient times. Because it is located in the rich and beautiful south of the Yangtze River, large-scale population has moved south many times in history, bringing a lot of Central Plains culture to the south of the Yangtze River and Taicang, forming the inclusive and diverse cultural characteristics of Loudong, which has always attached special importance to the Spring Festival. As far as I can remember, before New Year's Eve, all men, women and children in the village had to have their hair cut, and women had to "pull their faces". On New Year's Eve, the whole family has a reunion dinner, and the family has prepared all kinds of ingredients before sunset. When it gets dark, we should burn incense and wax to worship our ancestors first. This is called "asking for heaven", and then the whole family can sit around and eat together. On New Year's Eve, farmers usually have buns in their kitchen cabinets, and the lights are always on all night, which symbolizes the good omen of "more than one year old" and "more than one year old".
Lu Gu, a talented Suzhou scholar in Qing Dynasty, described in detail the Spring Festival customs and customs of Jiangnan people 200 years ago in Jia Qinglu, which has distinctive Jiangnan characteristics.
1. "Send the annual plate". "At the end of the year, relatives and friends ask each other about the genus of dolphin hoof, herring and fruit, which is called' sending the annual plate'." At that time, a bamboo branch said, "No matter how fresh the wine and food are, we will send New Year's food at the end of the year." . Although the ceremony is few and sincere, the friendship between friends and neighbors overflows mountains and rivers. "The so-called" year-sending board "originated in the Northern Song Dynasty. At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, people give gifts to each other, which is called "giving gifts for the New Year".
2. "Year City". "New Year's Eve is coming, and shopkeepers have opened stores in North and South grocery stores to meet the needs of residents in New Year's Eve, commonly known as' 60-day stores'. Deli shops, dolphin hooves, chickens and ducks are often bought. Paper horse incense shop, pre-printed money horse, paper paste gold ingot, satin block, more giant wax, tied incense. Neighborhood sells lanterns, lanterns, hanging ingots, kitchen labels, kitchen curtains, spoons, dustpans, bamboo baskets, porcelain, utensils, fresh fish, fruits and vegetables. Workers who forge, sharpen knives and kill chickens also came out at the right time, causing a storm in the city. Wine shops and drug shops belong to wine tanks, atractylodes rhizome and Piwendan respectively. It is always called "Niancheng".
3. "pressing the year." "When you eat cakes, fruits and pig's feet all year, it is called" old board ". The old man asked the children to weave hundreds of dollars with bamboo rope, called "lucky money", and put oranges and pears on the pillow, called "fruit for pressing the new year", which was eaten when sleeping on the first day of the first lunar month, and brought to Geely in the New Year. " The old-fashioned New Year's Eve plate is full of all kinds of fruits and food, which is called "New Year's Eve plate" in supper.
4. Shounian. "Family members sit around the fire, children play and stay up all night. This is called' Shousui'. Xi Zhenqi's poem "Keeping the Year" says:' Invite the sages to keep the Year, and the wax torch will turn into a gray blue yarn. Thirty-six years have passed, and I cherish the years since this night. ""When observing the old age, you should burn the "observing the old age candle": "The bedroom burns two rafters, and the night is endless. bloom gives good news and the morning light shines red, which is called" observing the old age candle "." "Shounian" means family reunion, also known as wasting time, making a fire, staying up late and so on. On New Year's Eve, the lights will stay on all night, so it's called "lighting the year with lights", that is, it is full of lights and candles on New Year's Eve. It is said that this will enrich the wealth of the family in the coming year. Celebrating New Year's Eve is one of the traditional activities to celebrate the Spring Festival.
5. The Year of Korea. Lunar New Year, especially the first day of the first month. "New Year's Day is the New Year's Day, but also every family hangs in the class, displays several cases, and prays for peace at the age of one with incense wax. Avoid sweeping the floor, begging for fire, drawing water and cutting with a needle. Dumping of dirt and feces is also prohibited. Don't sip porridge, drink soup and drink tea for dinner. Don't get up before dawn and stop screaming. When a man goes out, he must conform to the direction of the Western God. Women return to the mountains and win prizes. Men and women must wear new clothes and clean shoes. When you meet each other, you are given a hundred fruits, and every Kyrgyzstan is called' opening fruit'. "
6. "Happy New Year". "Men and women visit their parents twice, and the host leads them to visit their neighbors and friends, or no longer sends their children to congratulate them, which is called' Happy New Year'. It is also this time to say goodbye to those who have never seen each other for a lifetime. The surname of a book is a book. Fresh clothes dazzle the road, flying sedan chair gives birth to wind. Quiet alleys and secluded squares have become markets. Those who come to find others at dusk are called night worship. Outside the tenth day of the first lunar month, it is called Diwali. Therefore, there is a joke that' it is not too late to eat cold food'. "
When I was a child, I experienced the customs recorded by Lu Gu in Jia Qinglu. In the past, there was a saying in Taicang that "twenty-four eaves were dusted, twenty-five grinded, twenty-six steamed cakes, twenty-eight New Year's Day, twenty-nine years and thirty years". This ancient folk song is a part of the Chinese New Year custom of the old Taicang people, and some old customs, such as "grinding", have gradually disappeared with the changes of the times. However, there are also some old customs that have survived to this day. With the passage of time, great changes have taken place in the customs of my hometown Taicang. In Taicang, after the Laba Festival, people began to get busy, gradually entered the atmosphere of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, and built a sense of ceremony around food, clothing, housing and transportation.
paste up Spring Festival couplets
I remember my father's handwriting is very good, and neighbors often ask for words with red paper and black ink. At this time, look at the farmers' homes, and every door is covered with red paper and black couplets. The atmosphere of the new year seems to come at once. What people want is the festive meaning of the red paper of the Spring Festival couplets and the good oral color of the couplets.
Salted bacon
There is a jar for curing bacon at home. This kind of pottery can also be used to pickle pickles in summer. At that time, grandpa bought ribs early because he couldn't afford a whole pig thigh. At that time, whenever I saw grandpa holding fresh pork tied with straw in his hand, I knew I wanted to cure meat. The happiest thing is to watch grandpa operate step by step until he sprinkles the last handful of salt, carefully and evenly on the pork, and then lift a stone and press it on the pork. "Well, there is bacon to eat in the New Year." Grandpa touched my head and said. After a period of time, the bacon is naturally fermented in the tank and taken out to dry. At this time, people can smell the smell of bacon before they get to the yard.
Steamed rice cake
Cake is homophonic with high, which means higher every year. The custom of steaming rice cakes has a long history. Steamed cakes are made of local glutinous rice, which is different from japonica rice and more sticky. Grind glutinous rice into powder, put it in a steamer and steam it on a earthen stove. Put well water in the pot and firewood in the kitchen. Steaming cakes is a technical job, and there can be no mistakes in skills, temperature and moisture. Before putting the steamer on the pot, put some bamboo chips and chopsticks in the pot. Keep a certain distance between the boiling water and the steamer, and don't let the water touch the glutinous rice flour at the bottom of the steamer. In the process of steaming cakes, first spread five or six centimeters of glutinous rice flour in the cage, heat it slightly yellow, and then sprinkle a layer of flour. When this layer is cooked, sprinkle with flour. Repeat this five or six times, let the steam pass through the steamer continuously, and ensure that the rice cake is cooked slowly. Various fillings can also be added to make lard white sugar cake, red bean cake, brown sugar cake, etc. Hot air, accompanied by the smell of cake, filled the whole kitchen, and I was hooked up like a child. After steaming, put the steamer upside down in a bamboo plaque covered with gauze. At this time, the fragrance of rice cakes has permeated the whole yard. As soon as the winter wind blows, you can eat cakes when the temperature drops slightly in cold weather.
Baotuanzi
Jiaozi in Taicang dialect means jiaozi and Tangyuan. It is said that glutinous rice balls originated in the Song Dynasty. Black sesame, lard and white sugar are used as raw materials. First, black sesame seeds are ground into powder, then lard and white sugar are put into the mixture and kneaded into balls to make stuffing, and glutinous rice flour is used to knead the outside into a circle. It tastes sweet and delicious when cooked. Family members have different tastes and can be packaged into fresh meat, sesame seeds, bean paste and other flavors. After the stuffing wrapped in glutinous rice flour is cooked, take a bite, which is fragrant and delicious. There are two kinds of jiaozi eaten in Taicang now. One is a little jiaozi without stuffing. The practice is to make small dumplings with wine as soup, which can be eaten as snacks. On holidays, jiaozi is usually stuffed. I remember that I seldom ate glutinous rice balls when I was a child, because the living standard was not high at that time, and most people didn't have stuffing, let alone pork. In addition, the production process is more complicated than cooking, and the work in the field on weekdays is already very tired, so cooking at home is the most convenient. So every time I invite my relatives to eat jiaozi at home, it's either the New Year or the holidays.
Wrapped wonton
There are several origins of wonton, but no matter which one, it has a long history. "Kuai" means Bao in Taicang dialect. A bowl of wonton in chicken soup is a must for holidays, and it was my favorite pasta when I was a child. The wrapped wonton is small and delicate, and the soup is fragrant, with two drops of sesame oil, a little pepper and a pinch of chopped green onion. Now the most popular in Taicang is shepherd's purse wonton. Shepherd's purse is a kind of wild vegetable. Shepherd's purse is washed, chopped and cooked, and then stuffed with meat. Because shepherd's purse, wonton has the fragrance of wild vegetables. When my family cooks, I sometimes put Peaches, an egg, into wonton with kelp. In addition to the fragrance, it also adds umami flavor, which makes people want to stop as soon as they smell it. At that time, I had to eat a big bowl of wonton every time, and I wouldn't stop until I finished eating it. Nowadays, there are frequent exchanges between the North and the South, and eating jiaozi during the Spring Festival is also popular among Jiangnan people.
Chaofa road
"Click, click, click, click", hearing the sound of a shovel rubbing the iron pot and sand, I quickly ran out of the room and watched my mother stir-fry peanuts, sunflower seeds and other dried fruits in the pot. The fire in the kitchen is booming, and the attractive fruit fragrance is slowly spreading. Every year before the Chinese New Year, Taicang people like to fry their own peanuts, pumpkin seeds, corn kernels and other dry goods in a pot, which they call "frying fat". Mother took off her coat, smoothed her sleeves, and repeatedly fried it with a spatula for about forty minutes. After frying a pot, take out the dry goods, sieve the salt back into the pot with a bamboo sieve, and then fry the next pot. This is manual labor, and children can't do it at all. They can only add firewood to make a fire in the kitchen. At this time, the family get together to wash vegetables and cook, and talk about family life, which is very lively. I have never understood why this is called "speculation". Later, I learned that "speculation" has the meaning of getting richer with more speculation, and "speculation" is actually a "good color" of a fortune.
You can smell the flavor of the new year, in the steaming rice cake, in the fragrant "hair" and in the rich New Year's Eve dinner; You can see the flavor of the year on the Spring Festival couplets and blessings posted in front of every household, and on all kinds of bacon dried on the balcony. You can hear the smell of New Year in the voices of "Happy New Year" and "Congratulations" when people meet. When I was a child, I spent year after year in this colorful flavor of the year. With the changes of the times, life is getting richer and richer, and the new year seems to be less stressful. There is no denying that the taste of the year is getting weaker and weaker. However, around the Spring Festival every year, steamed cakes, jiaozi, wonton and fried bread are still very popular in cities and villages. These customs not only warm our memories, but also string together deep family ties. Some people feel the warmth of home during the festival, some people feel the passage of time, some people enjoy the peace of rest, and some people are full of longing for the future time. This is a unique custom of Taicang people in the south of the Yangtze River, and it is also a folk culture worthy of our inheritance.