The most important festival in the month of Lunar New Year is the Lahai Festival, from the pre-Qin Dynasty, Lahai Festival is used to worship ancestors and gods, praying for a good harvest and good luck. And now every Lahai people are cooking porridge to drink, in order to show that we do not forget the virtues of our ancestors thrifty, but also look forward to the gods to bring a good year of good food and clothing. So I'm going to talk about the story of Laha congee today
The Story
Every day on the eighth of Laha, families are always busy for a while, dedicated to cooking a pot of congee on Laha to warm up the stomach and stomach, to create the aura to carry over the snow and wind, and for the end of the year to pave the way for the big year. Then Laha Festival and what a holiday it is, I will talk to you again about this folklore story.
According to history books, this custom, the earliest originated in Buddhism. Buddha Siddhartha Gautama in the carefree tree, had set up a huge set of wishes, to travel the four seas, to "settle down", wide accumulation of good karma and all sentient beings. One day, because of days of trekking and empty stomach, resulting in serious physical exhaustion, fell headlong by the river. A kind shepherdess, picked a variety of dried fruits and beans, plus grains and cereals, boiled into a pot of thick porridge, spoonfuls into his mouth. Sakyamuni woke up, slowly regained strength, after seven days and seven nights, finally under the Bodhi Tree enlightenment to become a Buddha, the fruit of cultivation. From then on, every year on this day, that is, the eighth day of the waxing moon, temples and monks around the world to recite sutras and praise the Buddha, good men and women and the masses of people follow the example of the shepherdess to a variety of rice, beans and fruits boiled into a congee rice offerings to the Buddha also show sincerity.
In folklore, there is also a legend that Lapa congee is related to Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of Ming Dynasty. When Zhu Yuanzhang was a child, he worked as a cowherd for a rich man, and was often beaten and underfed. One day, the cow slipped and fell, broke a leg, the old rich man was furious, Zhu Yuanzhang will be locked into the stove house, do not give food. A long time, he was so hungry that the front of the chest to the back of the spine, had to look around for food, inadvertently found a mouse hole, peeled open a look, there are rice, beans, taro, and red dates, they will be mixed together, cooked into a pot of congee, eat and fragrant and sweet. Zhu Yuanzhang when the emperor, used to eating rare delicacies, suddenly remembered in the childhood due to muscle hunger eat the pot of rat food porridge. Then asked the imperial kitchen to do a meal of fruit sweet porridge, this day is on the eighth day of the waxing moon, and therefore named the congee for the waxing gruel. Full of civil and military see the emperor ate up Laha congee, have followed suit, spread to the people, and then became a custom. To the Qing dynasty Yongzheng dynasty is more prevalent, the emperor also personally rewarded ministers each a bowl of porridge, only one day's expenditure, on a few thousand taels of silver. It can be imagined that the Lahai Festival, in the royal and common people in the heart of the status is how important, and the letter of the far-reaching, this is the Lahai Festival legend.
Taihu Story
In many parts of the country have eaten "Lahai congee" custom, congee with roughly the same ingredients, but its origin may be different.
The saying around Taihu Lake in western Anhui Province is like this.
A long, long time ago, there is a place where there is a large temple, the temple monks and the number of handymen there is no exact number, anyway, every meal to ring the bell for the number. Burning rice with an iron pot with a wooden fence together will have a person deep, shovel as if the shovel now.
In the many monks, there was a year when the master of the orphans, this Saeki teenage dysentery, this Saeki looks ugly, but do not eat not lazy, a temple of the size of the monks like him. One winter, the snow closed the mountain, the transportation is blocked, the food outside the mountain can not be transported in, the temple began to lack of food, food is very provincial to eat, understand the monk Saeki is always waiting for the masters to finish eating and then go to eat some leftovers, and for a long time due to heavy malnutrition, the body is thin to the bones of the skin.
In the blink of an eye, to the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, the temple only the last meal of food, monk Saeki collected all the grains to cook a pot of porridge, plus oil and salt, taste really good, porridge is not fully cooked, monk Saeki climbed up to the pot, picked up the big shovel and want to stir a few times, due to the reason that a single person is thin and starving, a moment of dizziness, the body diagonal to the pot to the center of the sticking out, and suddenly the person loses balance, fell to the boiling pot! The man lost his balance and fell into the boiling pot.
The monks, as usual, opened the meal all flocked to the kitchen, everyone ate the fragrant porridge, to the end of the time, only to find that there is no little monk Saeki, the stove is responsible for plugging the wood of the monks said: "I remember that he also went on the stove ah!" At this time, a monk wanted to add a little more porridge to the bowl, picked up the spatula downward pry, turn up a look, a few human bones exposed on the top, the monk let out a cry of alarm: "Oh no! Cooked in the pot of dead people ah"! At once, all the monks in the temple were sad and cried: "We eat porridge to the monk Saeki ate ah! The monks were all sad and cried, "We ate the monk's porridge!
The monks did the most pious rituals with the best manners, and overcame the souls of the dead who gave up their bodies. From then on, every year on the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, a pot of the same porridge from that year was cooked in honor of the poor monk Saeki.
Slowly, this habit spread to the people.