Genghe Town In traditional folk festivals, urban and rural residents will bring their own traditional holiday snacks, among which the following are more common:
Rice flour, jiaozi, fried dumplings, glutinous rice balls, steamed dumplings, sticky rice corners, noodles, pink spring, taro, taro cake, radish cake, sweet potato wrapped powder, muffins. Among them, Seto rice noodles and steamed dumplings are well-known snacks. In 2004, Gaoming Food Festival won the title of Gaoming Top Ten Snacks.
There are also some famous foods in Genghe Town, such as dog meat mixed with water and delicious crispy mountain snails.
The custom of the times
(1) Spring Festival
The residents of Genghe Town call New Year's Eve and Spring Festival (the first day of the lunar calendar) China New Year. Before the festival, villagers, rich or poor, tried their best to buy new year's goods and prepare holiday food, including steamed zongzi, spring powder, fried dumplings, oil angle and fried rice cakes. On New Year's Eve, the whole family has a reunion dinner together. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, people wear bright clothes and say "Congratulations on getting rich" when they meet. The elders pay dividends to the younger generation. Everyone smiled and avoided quarreling. Every village beats gongs and drums, and lions come to every household to pay New Year's greetings. On this day, people are forbidden to clean, work hard and not visit relatives and friends. The second day of the year to the sixth day of the year is the day to visit relatives and friends.
Qingming Festival
Tomb-Sweeping Day is a festival for every family in Genghe Town to remember their dead relatives. Locals have the habit of worshipping ancestors and sweeping graves at Qingming Festival, commonly known as "taking the right path". People bring roast pigs, cakes and incense sticks to pay homage to their ancestral graves, and pray for the safety of the whole family while remembering their old friends. Since the funeral reform, people have changed from paying homage to ancestral graves to paying homage to cemeteries.
(3) Eat horns on the third day of the second lunar month.
On this day, every household makes slots (snacks) to entertain visiting relatives and friends (mostly married women go back to their parents' home to eat slots). There are oil angle, glutinous rice horn and mugwort (mugwort is homophonic with "de", which means that eating mugwort will make them strong, hardworking and energetic).
(4) March 3.
In addition, some villages will make fried cakes on the third day of the third lunar month (also known as Puzhu), which means family harmony and unity.
(5) Ghost Festival
The fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month, commonly known as Yulan Festival, is also called Ghost Festival. In the evening, women light incense sticks, sprinkle wine, rice and fruit, and burn five-color clothes and paper. However, some villages in Heshui do not celebrate this festival on the 14th day of the seventh lunar month. They burn incense and clothes before July 14 of the lunar calendar.
(6) Solstice in winter
During the winter solstice, people are more suitable to eat soup medicine (also called winter medicine). In ancient times, there was a saying that "the New Year is celebrated in winter". Women who have been married before are not allowed to celebrate festivals in their parents' homes. In some villages, there is a custom of "eating raw fish and dog meat in winter solstice".
There are other festivals, such as the Lantern Festival, the birthday of King Ba Niu in April, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Double Ninth Festival, which are celebrated in much the same way as other towns and villages.