Eating dumplings on the winter solstice has the meaning of reunion and good fortune, and symbolizes the rolling of wealth.
The winter solstice is an important festival in traditional Chinese culture, also known as the "Winter Festival". During this festival, eating dumplings is a traditional custom. Eating dumplings on the winter solstice has a meaning of reunion and good fortune. Because the dumplings are shaped like Yuanbao, they symbolize prosperity.
Dumplings are full of shape, content and flavor, and they are a delicacy for family reunion, especially when the family sits around and cooperates to make dumplings, which gives the dumplings more meaning of reunion and celebration.
Lore has it that Zhang Zhongjing, the "Sage of Medicine" of the Eastern Han Dynasty, once distributed in his hometown of Nanyang "Jiao Er," which was made of flour and stuffed with meat, and wrapped up into an ear to treat the frozen ears of the townspeople, and so dumplings were eaten at the winter solstice, not forgetting the "Jiao Er Soup. Therefore, the winter solstice diet of dumplings was also known as the "Cold Dispelling Jiao Er Soup" of Zhang Zhongjing, and in Nanyang, there is still a folk song that says, "If you don't serve a bowl of dumplings at the winter solstice, no one will take care of your ears if you freeze them off". Dumplings gradually became the winter solstice festival food.
Other Winter Solstice Food Customs
1, Eating Rice Cake
Hangzhou people like to celebrate the winter solstice by eating rice cake. Every winter solstice, cakes are made to offer to ancestors or as gifts to friends and relatives. In terms of diet, different flavors of rice cakes are made for all three meals, such as rice cakes with sesame powder mixed with sugar, fried rice cakes with shredded meat, and many other kinds of rice cakes. Hangzhou people eat rice cakes on the winter solstice for good luck, meaning that they will grow taller every year.
2, eat sweet pills
Chaoshan has "eat the winter festival round more than a year," said, which "winter festival round" is the soup dumplings, in the Chaoshan region, also known as sweet pills in the winter solstice day to eat sweet pills in the custom of almost the entire Chaoshan region. A long time ago, these sweet pills are not only for eating, people will be sweet pills posted on the door tops of their homes, roof beams, on the one hand, the sweet pills round, heralding the next year's harvest, the family reunion, and on the other hand, it is in order to thank the mouse to the farmers to send the seeds of the five grains.
3, eat wontons
In the winter solstice, Suzhou people have the custom of eating wontons. According to legend, the king of Wu, who was tired of eating delicacies of the sea, had no appetite, and the beautiful Xi Shi went into the royal kitchen and wrapped up a kind of dim sum and offered it to the king of Wu. The king of Wu ate a big bowl of it in one gulp and asked, "What kind of dim sum is this, it is so delicious." Xi Shi thought to herself that the king was so muddleheaded and chaotic that she casually replied, "Chaos." Later, in honor of Xi Shi's creation of this delicacy, the people of Suzhou made wontons the food of the winter solstice festival.
Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Winter Solstice Dumplings