On the first day of the first lunar month, during the Spring Festival, every household in China will celebrate the New Year, and diet is an important part of it. About ten days before the festival, people began to buy new year's goods, such as chicken, duck, fish, tea, wine and oil sauce, roasted seeds and nuts in the north and south, and fruit with sugar bait. It is a custom in the south of the Yangtze River to prepare the New Year's dinner in advance, put it in a bamboo basket, put fruits such as red orange, Wuling, water chestnut and gold ingot cake on it, and insert pine and cypress branches, which is called "New Year's dinner".
Northerners' New Year's Eve dinner is made of gold, silver and rice (yellow rice and white rice). The dinner was decorated with dates, chestnuts, longan and fragrant branches, with pine and cypress branches inserted.
Northerners eat jiaozi in the Spring Festival. Some people in jiaozi put sugar in their bellies with the intention of eating a sweet New Year. Some people put peanuts (called longevity fruit) in their stomachs with the intention that people can live longer after eating them; There is a kind of jiaozi, which is full of money. The intention is that whoever eats it will "get rich". Jiaozi is shaped like an ingot. During the Chinese New Year, jiaozi is cooked in the inner strip, which is called "Gold thread wears gold ingots". Auspicious language should be used in New Year's diet.
Jiangnan people make tea for their guests in the New Year, and put two olives on the tea tray or bowl cover, which is called "treasure-free tea". When eating in the New Year, there must be cooking, saying that eating "kissing hot"; Be sure to eat bean sprouts, because the shape of bean sprouts is like "Ruyi"; You must eat fish heads for every meal, but you can't eat them all. This is the so-called "leftover fish".
You must eat rice cakes during the Spring Festival, and the wind is the same in the north and south. Eat rice cakes and wish your life a "high year after year". Suzhou's sweet-scented osmanthus rice cakes, Ningbo's Shuimo rice cakes, Beijing's red jujube rice cakes and Baiguo rice cakes are all good New Year's cakes.
(2) Eating habits on New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is the night of December 30 (February 29) of the lunar calendar. It means that people will throw away the old cloth and the new cloth together when the moon is poor and the year is old this evening.
In the old custom of New Year's Eve, after worshipping the ancestors of heaven and earth, the whole family get together to eat "New Year's Eve", which is called "family reunion" and "reunion dinner". Eating New Year's Eve is a typical Jiangnan person. There are four cold pots, four hot fried pots and one warm pot on the table. On the dining table, there must be a bowl of fried vegetables or vegetables, which are green and green, called "Chang Geng Cai"; Some also serve lettuce (eggplant). Rosso is cooked with air-dried eggplant and other fruits and vegetables. This dish is the first thing to taste when you move chopsticks on New Year's Eve. Because of the sound of "falling" and "music" in the pentatonic. Eating custom on New Year's Eve, eating jiaozi in the north. Keep your birthday bag. Eat it when you die, which is called "jiaozi (jiaozi) every year". Northerners wrap jiaozi on New Year's Eve, paying attention to the thin skin and tight stuffing. You are not allowed to pinch it when wrapping it, and you are not allowed to cook it in a pot. If you accidentally break the jiaozi, you can only say "earned" and avoid saying "rotten" and "broken".
On New Year's Eve, every family in rural areas of Jiangsu will "draw a rice store", that is, fill a small bag with leaking lime powder, and print dense lime marks (ingots or arrows) on the ground and outdoors around the grain store to show that property, first of all food, is protected.
On New Year's Eve, "one night for two years". After the New Year's Eve, the whole family sits around the fire and eats peanuts, which is called "Shounian". Finally, the children obeyed their elders, who gave them "lucky money". In some places, the elders put oranges, lychees and other fruits on the bedside pillows where children sleep late on New Year's Eve, which is called "the fruit of pressing the new year", so that children can get the joy of the new year when they wake up on the first morning of the new year.
(c) China New Year and Diet
Erya Shi Tian said: "Nian is the name of harvest, which matures every year, so it is named Nian", and Nian is regarded as a symbol of harvest. Another way of saying it is that Nian is a hieroglyphic written by the ancients, with a head and a tail and four legs spread out, like a giant gecko, a terrible and ominous beast. If you don't meet for a year, you will spend it safely, and everyone will get together and cook something delicious. This celebration is called "China New Year". Now let's take a look at China's Spring Festival diet.
From the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, the Yangtze River valley had the custom of drinking "Tu Su wine", "Bai Ye wine" and "peach soup" every year. It is said that drinking Tu Su wine can avoid the plague. Baijiu is made by soaking cypress leaves in wine. Cypress is an evergreen tree, and its leaves will last forever after withering. Drinking cypress wine shows that it has a long life.
Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the dietary customs of New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are obviously different in the north and south. On New Year's Eve in the north, jiaozi eats more, which means "making friends when young" in homophonic. Some put sugar in jiaozi to pray for a sweeter life in the coming year; Others wrap a coin in jiaozi, and whoever eats it will make a fortune in the new year. On New Year's Eve in the south, people usually eat Yuanxiao and rice cakes. Yuanxiao is also called "Tangyuan", "Tuanzi" and "Zi Yuan", with more sugar in the middle, which means a happy and sweet family reunion. The rice cake is made of glutinous rice, which is homophonic "high every year". Until today, the custom of including jiaozi in the north and south is still very common.
(4) jiaozi
Jiaozi is a folk food with a long history and is deeply loved by people. There is a folk saying "delicious but not as good as jiaozi". During the Spring Festival, jiaozi has become an indispensable delicacy.
According to "Guangya" written by Zhang Yi, wei ren of the Three Kingdoms, there was a crescent-shaped food called "Wonton" at that time, which was basically similar to the shape of jiaozi now. By the time of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, wonton had been "shaped like a crescent moon, and it was delicious all over the world". Presumably, when jiaozi cooked it, he didn't take it out and eat it alone, but put it in a bowl with the soup, so people called jiaozi "wonton" at that time. This way of eating is still popular in some areas of our country. For example, when people from Henan and Shaanxi eat jiaozi, they should put some small ingredients such as coriander, chopped green onion, shrimp skin and leek in the soup.
By about the Tang Dynasty, jiaozi had become exactly the same as jiaozi now, so it was fished out and put on a plate to eat by itself. In Song Dynasty, Zi was called "Joule", which was the etymology of the word "Jiaozi" in later generations. This kind of writing can still be seen in the following Yuan, Ming, Qing and Republic of China.
Jiaozi was called a "flat food" in the Yuan Dynasty. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Shen Bang's Miscellaneous Notes on Ten Thousand Parts recorded: "New Year's Day, New Year's Day ...... as a patch food". Liu Ruoyu's "Proceedings" records: "Eat fruit snacks on New Year's Day and eat a plaque immediately." The "plaque" of the "plaque food" in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties is now commonly used as "ping". A kind of "flat food" may come from Mongolian.
Some new names about jiaozi appeared in Qing Dynasty, such as "jiaozi", "Water Snack" and "Boiled Bean". The increase of Jiaozi's names shows that its geographical spread is expanding. The folk custom of eating jiaozi during the Spring Festival has been quite popular in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Generally, jiaozi should wrap it up before New Year's Eve 12, and eat it at midnight. At this time, it is the beginning of the first day of the first lunar month. Eating jiaozi means "making friends when you are young", and "Zi" is homophonic with "jiaozi", which means "reunion" and "good luck".
There are many legends about eating jiaozi during the Spring Festival. One is to commemorate the creation of Pangu and end the mixed state. The other is to use it as a homonym of "wonton", which means "five grains are abundant" In addition, it is said that eating jiaozi's folk language is related to Nu Wa's making people. When Nuwa soil caused people, the ears of loess people were easily frozen off because of the cold weather. In order to prevent the ear from being fixed, Nuwa put a small eye on the ear, tied it with a thin thread, and put the other end of the thread in the mouth of the loess man to bite, so that the ear would be fine. In order to commemorate the achievements of Nu Wa, ordinary people wrapped jiaozi, molded adult ears with flour, wrapped them with stuffing (thread) and ate them with their mouths.
Jiaozi has become an indispensable program food for the Spring Festival. The reasons are as follows: First, jiaozi is shaped like an ingot. During the Spring Festival, people eat jiaozi, which sounds like "making money into treasure". Secondly, jiaozi has stuffing, which is convenient for people to put all kinds of auspicious things into stuffing and place their hopes for the new year. When wrapping jiaozi, people usually wrap Jin Ruyi, sugar, peanuts, dates and chestnuts into stuffing. Eat the best and sugar, life will be sweeter in the coming year, eat peanuts, live a long and healthy life, eat dates and chestnuts, and have a baby early.
In some areas, when people eat jiaozi, they have to match some non-staple food to show their good luck. If you eat tofu, it symbolizes the happiness of the whole family; Eating persimmons symbolizes all the best; Eat three fresh vegetables. It symbolizes that Sanyang opens Thailand. People in Taiwan Province Province eat fish balls, meatballs and seaweed, symbolizing reunion and wealth. Jiaozi has various fillings and making methods. Even the same kind of jiaozi has different ways of eating: Daur people in Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang want to cook jiaozi with vermicelli broth. Then eat with jiaozi; In some areas of Henan, jiaozi is cooked with noodles, which is called "gold thread penetrates gold ingot". Jiaozi cuisine not only brings joy to people, but also becomes an important part of China's food culture.
(5) rice cakes
During the Spring Festival, many areas in China pay attention to eating rice cakes. The rice cake, also known as "rice cake", is homophonic with "high year by year", which means that people's work and life are improving year by year.
As a kind of food, rice cakes have a long history in China. 1974, archaeologists discovered rice seeds at Hemudu matriarchal clan social site in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, indicating that our ancestors began to grow rice as early as 7000 years ago. People in Han Dynasty called rice cakes "rice cakes", "fish bait" and "glutinous rice cakes". The ancients also had a development process from rice cakes to rice cakes. In the 6th century A.D., the cookbook Historical Records contained the method of making "white cocoon candy" for rice cakes, which said: "If the rice is cooked thoroughly and hotter than that in Chu Jiu, it must be cooked extremely well so as not to have rice grains ..." That is, after the glutinous rice is steamed, it is boiled into rice and then cut into peach kernels. The method of grinding rice into cakes is also very early. The Book of Qi Yaomin written by Jia Sixie in the Northern Wei Dynasty can prove this point. The production method is to screen glutinous rice flour with silk, add water and honey to knead it into hard dough, attach dates and chestnuts to the dough, wrap it with bamboo leaves and steam it. This glutinous rice cake has the characteristics of the Central Plains.
Rice cakes are mostly made of glutinous rice flour, which is a specialty of Jiangnan. There are sticky grains such as glutinous rice in the north, and sticky millet (commonly known as millet) was first introduced in ancient times. This shelled millet powder is yellow, sticky and sweet after being steamed with water. It is a delicious food for people in the Yellow River valley to celebrate the harvest. The article "A Brief Introduction to the Scenery of Jingshi" published during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty recorded that Beijingers at that time would "eat millet cakes and have New Year cakes on the first day of the first month". It is not difficult to see that "rice cake" is a homonym of "sticky cake" in the north.
There are many kinds of rice cakes, such as the white rice cakes in the north, the yellow rice cakes of farmers in Saibei, the Shuimo rice cakes in the south of the Yangtze River, and the red turtle rice cakes in Taiwan Province Province. Rice cakes have different flavors from north to south. There are steamed rice cakes and fried rice cakes in the north, both of which are sweet; In addition to steaming and frying, southern rice cakes are also sliced and cooked in soup, which is both sweet and salty. It is said that the earliest rice cakes were used to worship gods and ancestors on New Year's Eve, and later became food for the Spring Festival. The rice cake is not only a kind of holiday food, but also brings people new hope with the passing of a year. As a poem in the late Qing Dynasty said, "People's hearts are high, and food is harmonious, so that the year is better than the year to pray for the year."
(6) More than one year.
On New Year's Eve, every family should have a dish, that is, whole fish. In the south of our country, fish is the last course of the whole banquet. People don't really eat it, they just put it on the exhibition until next year, which means there is plenty of time. In some areas, the whole fish is served as the first hot dish until the end of the banquet, and everyone symbolically takes a few bites. The fish on New Year's Eve is entrusted with people's good wishes for a prosperous family business and a surplus every year.