When it comes to the customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival, people will first think of eating moon cakes and admiring the moon. In the memory of old Shanghainese, there used to be such rich places as burning incense and fighting crickets. Among the many interesting Mid-Autumn Festival customs, there are three that are well-known to everyone in old Shanghai. Today’s Old Almanac will introduce to you the customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival in Shanghai and the “Three Treasures” of the Mid-Autumn Festival in old Shanghai. .
Old Shanghai people also call the Mid-Autumn Festival "August Half". There are many customs and activities in the Mid-Autumn Festival in Shanghai, such as burning incense, fighting crickets (crickets), walking on the moon, etc. The old Shanghai people decided that this day is for the whole family to gather together. When people gather together to have a reunion dinner, the must-eats are duck, taro and edamame, also known as the "Three Treasures" of the Mid-Autumn Festival in old Shanghai.
Mid-autumn in the south of the Yangtze River is the time for new ducks to be on the market, the season for picking edamame and taro, and the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month is also the day to worship ancestors, so edamame and taro are the "recommended" offerings and have become festivals. Essential food. On the one hand, offering sacrifices is to remember the ancestors and comfort the ancestors; on the other hand, it is to pray for the blessings of the ancestors.
Duck meat When Shanghainese celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, duck is indispensable on the table. There are many ways to cook duck, such as Babao duck, crispy duck, sauce duck, flat-tip ham and old duck soup... The most representative one is Babao duck. The belly of the duck is stuffed with ham, The eight fresh ingredients such as winter bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, chestnut meat, and shrimps are full of freshness in my memory.
If you want to trace the reasons for the custom of "eating ducks during the Mid-Autumn Festival", firstly, it is because around the Mid-Autumn Festival, ducks are getting fat, which is a good time to eat ducks; secondly, it originates from "killing Tartars". "Killing the Tartars" has different versions of the allusion and happened in different places, but they all talk about the peasant uprising that overthrew the Yuan Dynasty in the late Yuan Dynasty. Let's take a look at one of the more widely circulated versions.
The Mid-Autumn Festival "Kills the Tatars" During the late Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian rulers oppressed the Han people, and the Han people decided to overthrow the Yuan people. But at that time, the control was very strict, and we could not organize the struggle openly, but used code words. At that time, the Han people called the Mongols "Tatars", which was homophonic to "duck", and everyone agreed to sharpen their knives to kill the Tatars on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. When the Mongolians saw every household sharpening their knives, they asked what they were doing. The resident replied, "Killing ducks." According to legend, the custom of eating ducks during the Mid-Autumn Festival means that everyone takes action together to overthrow the rule of the Yuan Dynasty.
In fact, duck is eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival not only in Shanghai, but also in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In terms of season, salted duck has the best color and taste around the Mid-Autumn Festival. This is because the duck is made during the season when osmanthus blooms, and the duck meat will have the aroma of osmanthus, so the salted duck is also known as "osmanthus duck". There is such a record in "Baimen Cookbook": "In the August period of Jinling, salted duck is the most famous, and everyone thinks that the meat has the fragrance of osmanthus."
Traditional Chinese medicine calls duck "medicine" In terms of nutritional value and impact on human health, it makes sense to eat duck during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Autumn is the season when ducks are fattest. More importantly, ducks are a cool food, which can nourish yin and nourish the stomach, diuresis and reduce swelling. It is suitable for nourishing yin and nourishing body fluid to prevent autumn dryness.
Not only is duck meat rich in nutrients, but duck soup also has anti-fatigue effects. The cholesterol content of duck oil is relatively low compared to other animal oils, and the ratio of saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids is better. Duck blood has the effects of nourishing blood, clearing away heat and detoxifying.
Taro Taro is referred to as "taro", commonly known as "taro", and in Shanghainese it is called "taro head". There is also a legend about why taro got its name.
Memorial of the "Disaster" According to legend, during the Ming Dynasty, enemy invaders invaded our southeastern coast and the people suffered greatly. The imperial court sent Qi Jiguang to lead troops to fight against the enemy invaders and achieved great achievements. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, victory was celebrated in the camp. Late at night, the enemy took the opportunity to make a sneak attack. Qi Jiguang and others were besieged on the mountain and cut off food and grass. The soldiers only dug weeds to satisfy their hunger. They dug out a lot of wild yams and they were delicious, but they didn't know their names. Qi Jiguang said: "In memory of the fallen soldiers. Let's call it a 'distress'."
One night, after a feast of "disaster", the Qi army descended like soldiers from heaven, bravely broke through and annihilated all the enemy invaders in their sleep. Since then, people in the Southeast China Sea area have to eat sweets and burn "disasters" every Mid-Autumn Festival to express Qi Jiguang's achievements in resisting the enemy invaders and his immortal feelings to remember the national crisis from generation to generation. Because "distress" and "taro" are homophonic, people in the world call it "taro".
Southerners use taro when worshiping the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival, also to commemorate the historical story of the Han people killing the Tatars in the late Yuan Dynasty. As mentioned earlier, the Han people sharpened their knives on the night of August 15th, and after killing the Tatars in the uprising, they sacrificed their heads to the moon. Later, it was of course impossible to use human heads to worship the moon every Mid-Autumn Festival, so taro was used instead. To this day, in some places, peeling taro skin when eating taro during the Mid-Autumn Festival is called "peeling ghost skin."
Eating taro with gnashing teeth. According to legend, at the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, the Hu people destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty and established the Yuan Dynasty. They imposed cruel rule on the Han people living in the southeastern coastal area. In order to prevent the Han people from resisting, it was stipulated that every three households could only Being able to use a kitchen knife, the Han also called the Hu people "Hutou", and "taro" and "Hutou" are homophonic, so the heads of the Hu people were compared to taro, and they were used as sacrifices to rule over the Hu people. The person gnashed his teeth and ate taro (beard head) with deep-seated hatred.
The middle of August in the lunar calendar is exactly the season when taro is on the market. In Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the pronunciation of taro is similar to "yunlai". Therefore, eating taro during the Mid-Autumn Festival is not only about enjoying the food, but also expressing hope for good luck.
There is also a saying that because taro is a plant propagated by bulbs, it symbolizes "the dependence of mother and child", which is another beautiful meaning.
In the past, during the Mid-Autumn Festival in old Shanghai, during the reunion dinner, as soon as a pot of taro was put on the table, the children would fight over it and snatch it away. What we eat in old Shanghai is the local "red-stem taro", whose roots are slightly pink and not mushy when roasted. Dip in sugar and bite into it. It's fragrant, glutinous and refreshing.
Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" contains: "Taro, also known as: squatting owl. Historical records, Zhuo Wenjun said: Under the Min Mountain, there are squatting owls in the wild, and they will not be hungry until they die." There is "eating taro" It has the effect of widening the intestines and stomach, replenishing the skin, curing irritability and heat, breaking up blood, cooking with fish to lower qi, and regulating the body and tonifying deficiency. That is to say, taro is beneficial to the stomach, widens the intestines, laxative, detoxifies, and tonifies the liver and kidneys.
In addition to eating edamame with taro dipped in sugar, when I was young, edamame and taro were often cooked together, and edamame and taro were fried. The sound of edamame is homophonic to "maotou", which refers to babies or young children in Shanghai dialect; edamame is also called edamame pod locally, and pod is homophonic to the words "jia" and "ji". Therefore, eating edamame is to hope for good luck and everything goes well.
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