In our hometown (Rugao, Jiangsu), the winter solstice is a festival that pays equal attention to New Year's Eve and July 15, and four bowls are burned to worship the ancestors. And there are the following proverbs:

"Burn the year early, burn the winter late, and wait for July 15."

In other words, burning paper money to worship ancestors should be earlier on New Year's Day and later from winter to Sunday, and it is impossible to wait until noon on July 15.

There are also four bowls of dishes for ancestor worship. First of all, there can be no meat-like things, such as onions, garlic, leeks and so on. Secondly, the fish is best crucian carp, not silver carp, because silver carp has no seeds. Generally, there are at least fish, meat and tofu in four bowls, and the fourth one is sometimes egg skin, and the new year is meatballs. Tofu is abundant, and fish is more than enough.

The food for ancestor worship should be reversed. After the ancestor's sacrifice, the food can only be eaten after being heated on the stove.

The texture of the Eight Immortals dining table panel used for ancestor worship should be east-west (usually north-south). The ancestral table faces south in two places and east in three places. In the south, paper is burned and sacrifices are made. There are some small details, such as not breaking the rice bowl on this day, so I won't go into details. Of course, it is very important, and perhaps we don't want to see it, that is, ancestor worship must be carried out by men (I think this may be one of the reasons why boys are preferred to girls in rural areas).

I don't know why or where these details about ancestor worship come from. I haven't asked the previous generation, so I don't know even if I did. I think these courtesies may have been handed down from generation to generation after Confucianism became orthodox. And in this cycle, there will always be mistakes in details, so different versions of etiquette will appear in different places. In modern times, with the entry of urbanization into cities and the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, these manners have been weakened or destroyed, and some people are always surprised when they talk to others occasionally. However, this may be the progress of the times, right?

I remember this because my father was often busy outside, and almost all these tasks of ancestor worship fell on my family since childhood. The occasion of ancestor worship is in the hall at home, and the atmosphere is solemn, and all kinds of details are always sloppy.

Imagine such a scene: in the fireworks burning incense and paper, a child is calm and solemn and knocks on the head of the table three times.

In this way, the boy grew up in a year, went to college, left the farm, and now he is still wandering outside. But every time I go home for the New Year, I will still do all the rituals such as ancestor worship at home. My mother told me that you were very sensible since you were a child, so you can't go wrong. I'm a little sad to hear that.

I know that such an occasion, such an ancestor worship to my family, may be interrupted forever on me. I know, as soon as I enter the city, my house won't know where the south is, and my house won't have a big table. Even if I keep everything simple and try to burn incense to worship my ancestors, how can my ancestors know that there are their descendants in the small box in the steel forest to worship? I don't know what to do for my future children. I don't know whether to leave the brand that I have had for generations on him or her. If so, is this superstition or selfishness? If not, will this make him (her) lose his (her) roots again?