Eating dumplings during the Spring Festival has the meaning of festive reunion and good luck. Eating dumplings also means praying for the prosperity of the whole family and the success of the children, so dumplings are eaten during the New Year.

Because dumplings are shaped like ingots, eating dumplings during the Spring Festival also symbolizes "making a fortune in the new year and ingots rolling in".

Dumplings have the meaning of "Jiaozi in the new year", "Zi" means "Zi Shi", and "Jiao" is a homophone to "Jiao", which means festive reunion and good luck.

The radical of "Jiao" in dumplings is next to the character Qian, and its shape resembles an ingot, so it means attracting wealth.

The long history of dumplings

About dumplings, there is a popular saying among the people: "Drinking dumpling soup is better than prescribing medicine." There is an interesting legend about dumplings here: It is said that when Zhang Zhongjing was the prefect of Changsha, he often cured diseases for the people. One year when the local plague was prevalent, he built a big pot at the yamen gate and gave up medicine to save people. He was deeply loved by the people of Changsha. After Zhang Zhongjing retired from Changsha and returned to his hometown, he happened to catch up with the winter solstice and walked to the bank of Baihe River in his hometown. He saw many poor people suffering from hunger and cold, and their ears were rotten by the frost.

It turns out that typhoid fever was prevalent at that time, causing many people to fall ill. Zhang Zhongjing returned home and imitated the method in Changsha. He asked his disciples to set up a medical shed and a large pot on an open space in Dongguan, Nanyang. They opened it on the winter solstice and gave medicine to the poor to treat their injuries. Zhang Zhongjing named this medicine "Quhan Jiaoer Decoction". The method is to boil mutton and some cold-dispelling medicinal materials in a pot. After cooking, take these things out, chop them up, and wrap them in dough. The ear-shaped "Jiao Er" is boiled in a pot and distributed to the sick people. Each person has two Jiao Er and a bowl of soup. After people take the Quhan Decoction, their whole body feels warm, their blood becomes smooth, and their ears become warm. Many people ate it from the winter solstice to New Year's Eve, resisting typhoid fever and curing frozen ears. This is the legend of Zhang Zhongjing's invention of dumplings, and the method of making dumplings was passed down from generation to generation.

Praying for family reunion and peace is the common wish that ordinary people place on this kind of food. According to literature, the custom of eating dumplings in every household during the Spring Festival has been common in the Ming Dynasty. Every year on New Year's Eve, the Chinese call it "Jiaozi", which is the replacement of the old and new years. During the Spring Festival when bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new, dumplings are homophonic to "Jiaozi", so they have even more auspicious cultural connotations.

What are the interesting customs and particularities in making and eating dumplings?

1: Chop the fillings loudly

When chopping the fillings of dumplings on New Year’s Eve , be sure to chop it loudly, the bigger the better, so that the neighbors can hear it best. "Youcai" means "wealth" auspiciously, symbolizing wealth and prosperity in the coming year.

2: Good luck in the dumplings

When making dumplings at home, a coin is wrapped in a dumpling. Whoever eats it will have good luck in the coming year. In addition, there are also dumplings stuffed with sugar, peanuts, dates, chestnuts, etc. Sugar means that the new year will be sweet; peanuts mean longevity; chestnuts and dates mean "early birth".

3: Can’t count the numbers

For those of you who have elderly people at home, you may have heard that you can’t count the numbers when making dumplings. This is a way of saying that it’s good luck. , the reasons are:

1) Dumplings symbolize ingots, and not counting the number of dumplings means that you will make countless fortunes in the coming year and have more than you need every year. If you count the wealth you will make in the coming year, it will not be a continuous source, but it will become less and less.

2) Counting while eating dumplings will make you look arrogant, like a miser. Counting while spending money will end up with less and less money.

4: There should be surplus dumplings

When making dumplings, wrap more dumplings, which means there will be more than enough every year.

5: Dumplings should be filled with as much filling as possible

Dumplings should be filled with as much filling as possible so that they are not afraid of eating. There is a saying that "thin skin and big stuffing" actually means that the dumplings with big stuffing will be very plump after being cooked, which represents the completeness of the family in the New Year.

6: The wrapped dumplings are numbered in circles

When placing the wrapped dumplings on the curtain, do not place them randomly, but in order, one circle at a time When queuing up and coding the dumplings, they must face one direction, which means "encircling blessings." Two dumplings cannot be placed face to face or back to back, because facing each other means "dead enemies." In the coming year, it is easy to have "quarrels" with others; placing them back to back means that family members will deviate from each other in the coming year.