"If you have eaten laba rice, you will do it in the New Year." Chinese New Year is not New Year's Eve, but a period. For the taste of the year, people have to make a lot of preparations to render the long-awaited taste of the year: "Twenty-three sacrificial stoves, twenty-four house sweeping, twenty-five window pasting, twenty-six steamed buns, twenty-seven fattening chickens, twenty-eight dozen magnetic cakes and twenty-nine fried marinated dishes." Everything is carried out according to the traditional procedures, so these days, the neighborhood is fragrant and every household is beaming. When they see you passing by, the metropolis warmly invites you in to taste the newly fried meatballs. Children will take bamboo sticks, which contain meatballs, fish balls, sweet potato balls and so on, and try to eat each other. At the same time, they will count their fingers, and it will be only a few days before the Chinese New Year.
New Year's Eve has finally arrived. Everyone in the family got up early, and even the chickens and dogs were happier than usual. They are preparing for the Spring Festival with their host.
According to the custom, women have to go into the kitchen to prepare the New Year's Eve dinner, and it is a man's job to cook and paste couplets. Put up couplets in the main room first. Although the content of couplets changes every year, it is those words every year. First put a "lucky star" on the horizontal batch, pay attention to the upper and lower couplets, the upper part on the right and the lower part on the left, otherwise others will laugh. Then put up the gate, and then put up some vertical "small signs": "Go out to Italy, open the door to see happiness" posted on the front wall of the main house, "Forgive everything, all the best" posted on the barn and the cow, pig and chicken pen, "Five crops flourish" posted on the kitchen. The gate or courtyard gate was finally posted. When passers-by saw the new couplets posted at the gate, they knew that the family was going to prepare for the New Year's Eve dinner.
The New Year's Eve dinner in my hometown is usually eaten at noon. It is about saying goodbye to the old year and seeing who will eat the New Year's Eve first, which indicates that "a year's plan lies in spring, and no pains, no gains". Around eleven o'clock, firecrackers exploded in the village, one after another, which lasted for more than two hours. Rural New Year's Eve also pays attention to setting off firecrackers, which means catching up with disasters to eliminate evil spirits (in fact, the weather in rural areas is humid, and the smoke generated by firecrackers can play a bactericidal role), so firecrackers should not be turned off or sounded short. The more urgent and dense firecrackers are, the more prosperous they will be in the coming year. After setting off firecrackers and playing cheerful music, the whole family began to have a reunion dinner.
However, the custom of eating New Year's Eve is different. One of our neighbors comes from Hubei, and we all call him "Jane", which means unfriendly and lazy. We have dinner together on New Year's Eve. Every year, they celebrate the Spring Festival in the evening. A cannon goes off and people from far away say with a smile, "Man Zi's family has spent their old age".
After dinner, there is still a division of labor. Women are still going into the kitchen to mix noodles, chop jiaozi and wrap jiaozi. Men should take axes, saws and hoes up the mountain to collect money. They want to cut down a big tree and dig it up by the roots as "firewood" to support the elderly. The fireplace lit by this tree will last until the first morning, which is "the great wealth of fire" The period after leaving the old year to welcome the new year is the beginning of school for children. They took out the prepared firecrackers and blew up the whole village.
Eating New Year's Eve is to protect the old and welcome the new. This procedure starts with cooking the first pot of jiaozi at night. The whole family, old and young, still have a family reunion dinner together. After eating jiaozi, they will also pack jiaozi. The first day is ready. You can watch TV or play small cards (mahjong) and wait patiently for the bell to ring 12.
10 More than a minute ago 12, the villagers began to put some short whips or single firecrackers to warm up the scene. Men put their whips on bamboo poles for next year, waiting for the ignition signal. Every time CCTV counts down, everyone stands up and shouts, "5, 4, 3, 2, ignition!" " At this time, the whole village could not hear any sound except firecrackers. Everyone is longer and louder than others. Fireworks and firecrackers began to appear after the whip was released the following year. This family staged "Nine-Pearl Reunion" and that one staged "Spring Thunder on the Earth". This colorful bead fireworks, like a meteor, flew obliquely to other people's small yard, and the family was not to be outdone. They immediately retaliated with several noisy cannons and launched a fierce battle. Fireworks exchanged fire for more than an hour. After the fireworks, the children climbed up the wall of the yard and looked at the fire in the next yard.
It was not until one o'clock at night that the guns faded away. According to local customs, it is not allowed to get dark on New Year's Eve. Every household should turn on the lights all night, and the houses used, including bedrooms, should be lit. Lighting the way home for those who are still running around during the New Year also indicates the bright future in the coming year, so no matter how poor the family is, the electricity bill for this night can't be saved.
Year after year. In this way, in the traditional tight and urgent procedure, in the brightly lit night, in people's excited and tired snoring dreams, 2008 gradually drifted away.