Legend has it that one year in Tomb-Sweeping Day, Li Xiucheng, the general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was chased by Qing soldiers. A farmer nearby came forward to help, disguised Li Xiucheng as a farmer and cultivated land with him. Li Xiucheng didn't get caught, and the Qing soldiers didn't stop there, so they sent more soldiers to set up posts in the village. Anyone who left the village had to be inspected to prevent them from bringing food to Li Xiucheng.
When he got home, the farmer thought about what to bring to Li Xiucheng and slipped on a clump of wormwood. When he got up, he saw that his hands and knees were stained with green. He immediately had a plan, and quickly picked some wormwood to go home, washed it, cooked it, squeezed it into glutinous rice flour and made it into zongzi. Then put the green jiaozi in the grass and mix with the sentry at the village entrance.
Li Xiucheng ate the green ball, and felt that the fragrant glutinous rice was not sticky. After dark, he bypassed the Qing army post and returned to the base camp safely. Later, Li Xiucheng ordered the Taiping Army to learn to be a youth league to defend itself against the enemy. The custom of eating dumplings spread.
What does Tomb-Sweeping Day eat? Because the cold food custom of the Cold Food Festival was transplanted to Tomb-Sweeping Day, some places in northern China still retain the habit of eating cold food in Tomb-Sweeping Day. In Shandong, Jimo eats eggs and cool cakes, while Laiyang, Zhaoyuan and Long Island eat eggs and cool sorghum rice. Taian eats cold pancakes and rolls bitter vegetables. People in southern Shanxi used to steam steamed bread with white flour, with walnuts, dates and beans in the middle.
In some places in the south of China, there is the custom of having a reunion dinner, which is also called Qingming Cake, Noodle Cake, Cike Cake, Qingming Baba, mugwort Baba, mugwort Cake, Qingming Fruit, Bobo Cake, Qingming Cake and mugwort Cake.
In the hometown of overseas Chinese in southern Fujian, every time we go to Tomb-Sweeping Day, we will make some cakes, cakes and rice noodles for our families to eat before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day. According to the old custom in Shanghai, steamed cakes for sacrifice are put on wicker, dried and stored, and fried for children on the day of long summer.
In Huzhou, Zhejiang, every family in Tomb-Sweeping Day makes zongzi, which can be used as a grave-sweeping sacrifice or as dry food for hiking.
What are the customs in Tomb-Sweeping Day? 1. outing: the Chinese nation has had the custom of Qingming outing since ancient times. In ancient times, it was called spring outing, spring seeking and so on. Spring outing, also known as spring outing, refers to going for a walk in the suburbs in early spring.
2. Planting trees: Before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day, the spring is bright and the spring rain is falling. The planted seedlings have high survival rate and fast growth. So there is a habit of planting trees in Tomb-Sweeping Day, and some people call Tomb-Sweeping Day Arbor Day. The custom of planting trees has been passed down to this day.
3. Flying kites: Kites are also called "paper kites" and "kites". Flying kites is the most popular activity in Tomb-Sweeping Day. Kite is an aircraft that sticks paper or silk with bamboo strips and other skeletons, pulls a long line on it, and drops it into the sky under the action of wind. It belongs to an aircraft that only uses aerodynamic force. During their stay in Tomb-Sweeping Day, people not only wore it during the day, but also at night.
4. Grave-sweeping and ancestor worship: Grave-sweeping and ancestor worship is the center of Tomb-Sweeping Day custom. In some places, sweeping graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day is called "sweeping mountains", "offering sacrifices to heaven" or "offering sacrifices to mountains". Out of respect for ancestors, or the rhetorical habit of "doing everything except evil and calling it beauty".