The New Year's custom in old Beijing is: eat jiaozi on the first day, jiaozi on the second day, turn the children around the pot on the third day, spread eggs on pancakes on the fourth day, eat jiaozi on the fifth day, and have a party at will on the sixth day.
After eating the New Year's Eve, it will be the New Year. What to eat in the New Year is different in different parts of the country.
The first meal of the Spring Festival in Hunan is to eat "rice cakes", which means "getting better every year", while a few Miao people in Hunan eat sweet wine and zongzi for the first meal of the Spring Festival, which means "life is sweet and the grain is plentiful".
In some places in Hubei, the first meal of the Spring Festival is chicken soup, which symbolizes "peaceful and clear collar". In addition, the main labor force in the family must eat chicken feet, which means "grabbing money in the New Year"; Young students want to eat chicken wings, which means they can fly high; Family members eat chicken bones, which means "getting ahead". Jingzhou, Shashi area, the first meal to eat eggs, meaning "true, auspicious." Guests should eat two half-cooked "poached eggs", and the yolk can be seen through the protein, which means "gold is covered with silver, gold is covered with silver, and gold is covered with silver".
In some places in Guangdong, the first meal of the Spring Festival is to eat "grain for ten thousand years", that is, to prepare enough food for the whole family for three days of the Spring Festival, which means "don't worry about eating or drinking". In Chaozhou, the first meal is often "rotten round" fried with rice flour and dried radish, and "five-fruit soup" boiled with Gordon Euryale seeds and lotus seeds, which means "life is sweet and has a long history".
Guangxi Zhuang people eat sweets at the first meal of the Spring Festival, which means that life in the new year is beautiful and sweet.
The first meal in Poyang, Jiangxi Province is to eat jiaozi and fish, which means "making friends" and "more than a year". Some people put candy, flowers and silver coins in jiaozi, which means "sweet life", "immortality" and "getting rich in the new year".
Minnan people eat noodles for the first meal during the Spring Festival, which means "every year", while Zhangzhou eats sausages, preserved eggs and ginger, which means "the days are getting more and more prosperous".
In some places in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the first meal of the Spring Festival is a "spring dish" consisting of celery, leeks and bamboo shoots, which means "hard work for a while".
In some places in Anhui, everyone should eat a bite of raw radish at the first meal of the Spring Festival, which is called "biting spring", which can "sterilize and prevent diseases and make the New Year auspicious".
The second day, the second day is also very particular. It is said that the next day's noodles will be made from the first day's jiaozi noodles. And this must be cold soup. That is, noodles are cooked and soaked in cold water, which is called cold soup. Nowadays, people usually cook noodles or fry some sauces to make noodles or Zhajiang Noodles. However, it must be soaked in cold water to maintain the custom of "eating noodles on the second day of school"
On the second day of old Beijing, the God of Wealth borrowed an ingot.
The next morning, I got up before dawn to cook wonton, because it looked like an ingot.
In the north, the god of wealth sacrifices on the second day of the first month. On this day, both commercial shops and ordinary families will hold activities to worship the god of wealth. Families offered sacrifices to the God of Wealth who arrived on New Year's Eve. In fact, the bought rough printed matter was incinerated. I want to eat wonton at noon this day, commonly known as Yuanbao soup. Fish and mutton were used as sacrifices. On this day, big businesses in old Beijing will hold large-scale sacrificial activities, with five offerings, namely whole pig, whole sheep, whole chicken, whole duck and red live carp, hoping to make a fortune this year.
The vegetable box in the third grade may be a characteristic of the north. In fact, the so-called food box is similar to meat pie and the like. Roll out the dough, add the meat, knead it into a ball, then roll it into a cake, pinch out flowers at the edge of the cake, and then put it in an iron pan for branding. While turning, keep turning, turning over.
On the third day, the mouse got married.
There is a saying in old Beijing, but it is not particularly popular. Most people move from the south to the north, and families who move from rural areas to cities have this custom.
It is said that the third night is the day when mice get married. All Beijingers go to bed early, turn off the lights and hide their shoes in case mice take them away. Some put some rice in kang caves, ceilings and other places. On this day, if a child living in a bungalow hears a mouse running around the ceiling, the grandmother will say that the mouse is getting married.
There are different opinions about the folk customs of the fourth day of junior high school, and the customs vary from place to place. On the fourth day of the fourth year, "Three Sheep (Yang) open Thailand" should be auspicious, but it happened that someone fabricated "Red Sheep Robbery" to deceive people and told them not to go out. There is also a legend that the kitchen god will check his household registration on the fourth day and don't leave home. Although these statements are nonsense, they meet the requirement that people need to adjust at home one day during continuous holidays, so there is a custom in old Beijing that they should not go out on the fourth day of the fourth year.
On this day, the whole family eats discounted food together. The so-called discounted food is a hodgepodge of leftovers for a few days. On this night, the store will entertain big and small guys and distribute red envelopes. There used to be an old saying in Beijing: "I'm not afraid of the sky and the earth, but I'm afraid that the shopkeeper will speak Mandarin on the fourth night." There is wine and food at the banquet, and the custom after drinking is to eat steamed buns. The shopkeeper then raised a glass to congratulate everyone and said, "Thank you", which is called "Mandarin". After Putonghua is finished, the steamed stuffed bun is served, and the shopkeeper personally puts the steamed stuffed bun in the bowl. Whoever puts the steamed stuffed bun in it means who is fired. People who are fired automatically pack their bags and leave after dinner, so this informal dinner is commonly known as "eating steamed buns".
Breaking the fifth refers to the fifth day of the first lunar month. Jiaozi needs to be cooked if it is broken. Boiled. What was it called in the past? For example, if you wear a pair of shoes, they will be made smaller. Not strong again. Stamp your feet and open them. Take this homonym for example.
Breaking five festivals is also relative to the Spring Festival. The real Spring Festival is from grade one to grade three. On the fifth day, the festival will soon be over. This phenomenon was prominent in the commerce before liberation. At that time, the commercial service industry did not rest all year round, and only after the Spring Festival from the first day to the fifth day did the sixth day officially open. It is matched with all kinds of shops, grain markets, meat markets and people's markets (all kinds of talent distribution centers and temporary employers go to the people's markets to recruit workers) that opened on the sixth day. In other words, on the sixth day of the first month, all walks of life, large and small, returned to normal. Therefore, all shop assistants are required to return to the store on the fifth day to make preparations before opening.
On the fifth day of the fifth year, we eat jiaozi. One reason is that the employees of the whole store get together for the first time after the festival, so we want to have a reunion jiaozi on this day. There is also a saying in China called "delicious but jiaozi, comfortable but upside down", which means lying down. The most delicious food is jiaozi, which contains vegetables, meat and staple food.
Eating jiaozi has another meaning, because jiaozi's production, some places are called Bao jiaozi, which means wrapping the stuffing with dough, and some places are called Pin jiaozi, which means putting the stuffing on the dough and twisting the dumpling skins together. According to the second statement, pinching jiaozi is a symbol of pinching the clerk's mouth. Don't talk nonsense, talk less and do more. For now, just don't reveal business secrets, such as the secret recipe of our products, production technology and profit rate.
On the morning of the sixth day, every shop will open. Before opening, every household should hang a couplet at the door, saying "All the best, all the best", and the ringing abacus sounds at the counter, which is intended to make business prosperous in the coming year. At this point, the "year-end" has passed and everything has resumed its usual life.
On the sixth day of old Beijing, housewives have to throw out the garbage accumulated during the festival, which is called sending it to the poor. The paper hanging on the door can also be taken down and thrown out at the same time, which is called sending the poor god. The most popular boys on this day are boys over 12, and 12 is twice as much as 6, which can be called "Liu Liu Shun". It is also said that Liu Hai, the holy God, is a Beijinger, a fat boy dressed in red and green. There is a saying among the people that "Liu Hai plays the golden toad and makes money step by step", and his image is deeply loved by the public. A boy of the animal year, wearing bangs, took to the street with five little people cut out of white paper or colored paper on his back. Whoever caught it, even the god of wealth, was told to throw away the poor guy. If two people are born in the same year, whoever catches the villain behind each other first will be lucky. Small cloth bags thrown out by the poor are also useful to throw away. Both sides should carry a small basket, and whoever throws the small bag into the basket behind the other side first will throw the poor out first, which is auspicious. Today, the traditional national sports event "Hunting" is developed from the game of "throwing poor ghosts to rob the gods of money". Unfortunately, this kind of activity still exists in Liaoning, but it is rare in Beijing. On that day, the vendors went to the streets, because it was a horse day, and the family wanted to buy "snowballs" for the poor boy.
Women don't go out until the sixth day.
In ancient times, from the first day of the first month to the fifth day of the first month, most families did not receive women, which was called "taboo". Only men can go out to pay New Year's greetings, and women can't go out to visit until after the sixth day of the first month, so the time limit for New Year's greetings can be extended to around the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month. If for some reason you don't follow the routine ceremony and make up for it in the future, it's called "worshiping the old".