It means sending the Kitchen God to heaven to pray for a good harvest in the coming year.

Ciba is not only a delicacy for people in Jinzhai, Anhui, but also a must-have for Spring Festival sacrifices. No matter which family it is, after making glutinous rice cakes during Xiaonian, they must first take out a piece, put it on the chopping board and press it into thin slices, and cut it into cubes with a knife for later use.

On Little New Year’s Eve, the biggest custom in Jinzhai is to send the Stove Lord to heaven. After midnight on this day, every household will place three portions of glutinous rice cakes on the stove, light candles, and set off firecrackers, which means sending the Stove Lord to heaven. The prince went to heaven to pray for a good harvest in the coming year.

The various ways of eating glutinous rice cake also have beautiful meanings. In Jinzhai, breakfast on the first day of the Lunar New Year must be boiled glutinous rice cake. In order to symbolize the prosperity of the new year, every family puts boiling water in a large pot, puts the soaked glutinous rice cakes into the pot, and then puts dozens of poached eggs. Each family member has a big bowl. The smell makes people immersed in it all of a sudden. In the New Year atmosphere.

Eat glutinous rice cake during the Chinese New Year to commemorate Wu Zixu:

According to legend, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Wu Zixu, a minister of the Chu State, defected to the State of Wu to avenge his father and wanted to borrow troops from the State of Wu to attack the State of Chu. He came to the State of Wu to help King Helu of Wu stabilize his position and became a meritorious minister of the State of Wu. Soon, he realized his ambition and led the Wu soldiers to conquer Yingdu, the capital of the Chu state, and exhumed the tomb of the King of Chu and whipped his corpse to avenge him.

King Wu ordered him to build the famous Helu city to prevent invasion. After the city was built, King Wu was overjoyed, but Wu Zixu was unhappy. Wu Zixu said to the people around him: "The king will be happy and forget his worries, and he will not end well. After my death, if the country is in trouble and the people are hungry, they can dig three feet under the Xiangmen City to find food to satisfy their hunger."

At the time of crisis, people remembered Wu Zixu’s instructions during his lifetime and secretly demolished the city wall and dug the ground, and found that the city foundation was made of masonry pressed with cooked glutinous rice. It turns out that when Wu Zixu built the city, he steamed a large amount of glutinous rice, pressed it into bricks and let it cool, then used it as the cornerstone of the city wall and stored it as food for shortages. Later, every good year, people used glutinous rice to make glutinous rice cakes like city bricks to commemorate Wu Zixu.