On New Year's Eve, there is a custom of eating jiaozi in northern China. Jiaozi has a variety of shapes, including the traditional meniscus. Fold the dough in half and knead it along the edge of the semicircle with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, which is called "pinching happiness"; Some are in the shape of "Yuanbao", which symbolizes wealth everywhere; Some people even put jiaozi on the grain pattern, symbolizing the bumper harvest in the new year. No matter what jiaozi looks like, it symbolizes people's good expectations for a prosperous life in the coming year.

You can also contribute. There are countless kinds of fillings in jiaozi. There used to be the most basic Chinese cabbage stuffing, pork stuffing, leek stuffing and so on. Now that people's living standards have improved, jiaozi has added many new varieties, such as seafood and ice cream, which are getting more and more delicious.

But you know what? Jiaozi is not only beautiful and delicious, but also has many customs about it!

The custom of eating jiaozi during the Spring Festival was 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".

On New Year's Eve in jiaozi, jiaozi was put into a boiling pot with firecrackers to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. In the past, several pots of jiaozi were cooked on New Year's Eve. In the first pot, all the immortals and ancestors are honored first, but it is the turn of the elders and children at home to eat, which is regarded as respecting the old and loving the young, and the rest of the family eats the second pot, jiaozi. When people in many places in Shandong Jiaodong Peninsula cook jiaozi, the host will deliberately cook a few pieces, but after it comes out, it can't be said that jiaozi has "risen" or "earned". Do you know why? Because the jiaozi is broken, the food wrapped in it will fall out. The homonym of "food" and "wealth" together means "increasing wealth" or "making money". Jiaozi's plate packaging is also very particular, and it can't be placed casually. There is another sentence: busy, don't let jiaozi run around. In Shandong and other places, the plates should be round. First put a few jiaozi in the shape of an ingot in the middle, and then put them neatly around the ingot, which is called "round blessing" or "gathering wealth". Some even stipulate that no matter the size of the plate, each plate can only hold 99 jiaozi, and the whole plate should be filled, because the homonym of "nine" is "long" and putting 99 is a symbol of "endless happiness". There is a touching legend about jiaozi. According to legend, Zhang Zhongjing, a medical sage, was a magistrate in Changsha, then resigned and returned to his hometown. Just in time for the winter solstice, he saw the people in Nanyang hungry and cold, and their ears were frostbitten and frozen. Typhoid fever was prevalent at that time, and many people got sick. He thought, "I know medical skills, why not help them treat them?" Zhang Zhongjing summed up the clinical practice in the Han Dynasty for more than 300 years, so he set up a medicine shed and a cauldron in the local area, and made mutton, pepper and herbs for dispelling cold and warming up into ear-shaped dough bags, cooked them and sent them to the poor with soup and food, named: Quhan Joule Decoction. People eat from the solstice of winter to New Year's Eve to resist typhoid fever, and their ears will be fine before they know it. Since then, people in the village and later generations have imitated it and called it "Jiaoer" or "Jiaozi". In some places, it is also called "flat food" or "instant noodle jiaozi". Later, in memory of Zhang Zhongjing, people cooked jiaozi every New Year, which gradually became a custom.