People in Yangzhou attach great importance to "putting lanterns on dumplings and dropping lamps on noodles". Although Yangzhou people have the habit of having morning tea in teahouses, the morning of the first day of junior high school is an exception. People generally don't go out and have a steaming bowl of glutinous rice balls with the whole family at home. There are many ways to make dumplings in Yangzhou. One kind of dumplings is called

"Sixi Tangyuan", which people like to eat on the morning of New Year's Day. This kind of dumplings is made of four kinds of stuffing, including vegetables, red bean paste, sesame candy and minced meat. The taste is good, but people pay more attention to the name of glutinous rice balls, because the meaning of this kind of "four-happiness glutinous rice balls" is "all the best" and "family reunion" Similar to the "Sixi Tangyuan", Yangzhou people in the old days also had the custom of eating "lucky eggs" on the morning of the first day of junior high school. There is such a narrative in chapter 27 of chili pepper in Piwu, a commentary on Yangzhou: In the fourth watch, the cold is heavier. At this time, someone shouted at a distance: "Sell-Lucky Eggs!" What is an auspicious egg? That is, when the eggs are cooked, people's landscapes are painted on the eggshells, with red and green colors; Or write some words, such as "good luck" and "good luck every year" ... This egg is called good luck egg. In the past, during the Spring Festival, lucky eggs were sold everywhere, and every household had to buy them. Buyers come to make good luck for the family. The head of the family, lying on the bed with his face facing the sky, the woman put the auspicious eggs at the door of the man's heart and said something auspicious! How satisfying it is to get rich! All the best! ..... and so on, and then ask the man to eat the egg, and everything goes well every year. ..... Vendors selling "lucky eggs" have long been out of sight, so it's a pity that most people in Yangzhou today don't know what "lucky eggs" are. According to the description in Yangzhou Pinghua, this eggshell is also painted with landscapes, so it is not so much a lost seasonal food as a lost folk handicraft. On the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month, there is a saying in Yangzhou that "the lantern on the lantern falls on the lantern face", which means that on the thirteenth night of the month, you should eat glutinous rice balls when you put on the lamp, and on the eighteenth night of the first month, you should eat noodles when you put off the lamp. Why is there such a custom? The public's explanation is that eating dumplings symbolizes "fullness and fullness" and eating noodles symbolizes "smoothness and smoothness". "Tangyuan" here is also called "Yuanxiao". Nowadays, people in Yangzhou call solid glutinous rice balls "Yuanxiao" and glutinous rice balls with stuffing "Tangyuan". In the old days, this was not the case. Those with stuffing were also called "Yuanxiao". In "Introduction to Zhenzhou Zhuzhi Ci", it was said: "Yuanxiao people, rubbing glutinous rice flour and wrapping osmanthus in the middle, are like a full moon." It seems that because "the moon is full", Yangzhou people call "Yuanxiao" "Tangyuan". The meaning of eating glutinous rice balls "round and full" also comes from this. Eating noodles is on the night when the lights go off on the 18th day of the first month. "Introduction to Zhuzhi Ci in Zhenzhou" also says: "When the lights go off on the 18th, people spit their faces, which is commonly called" putting on a lantern and putting on a lantern ". Let's have a banquet for ourselves to celebrate. On the 19th, I worshipped Tibetan images to wash away the joy, and the common name of joy hangs music. As the saying goes, every family tore up the music and everyone searched for it. Scholars attack books, workers return to their places, and their years are over. " This passage doesn't directly explain why we should eat noodles on the 18th day of the first month, but the answer has been implied: on the 18th day of the first month, we should "finish our years", and from now on, "everyone should find their whereabouts", "scholars will attack books and workers will return to their places", and eating a bowl of noodles is to wish people that everything will be as smooth and smooth as eating noodles in their upcoming lives. Eating dumplings or noodles is the self-design and self-arrangement of Yangzhou people for their daily life. It is also the uniqueness of Yangzhou people to find out the meaning of auspicious and auspicious from the simple food image. In the first month of the New Year's Wine Festival, Yangzhou people also have the custom of "inviting the spring festival" and "being a god of wealth". There is a poem "Please make wine in spring" in Volume 5 of Three Hundred Poisons on the Hanjiang River, which says: "When the spring breeze arrives, it will be prosperous, and the whole spring dish will be full of strange smells. I won the beauty of spring, and I am in the family this spring. " The quotation of this poem makes it more clear: "Yangcheng banquet is full, and friends and relatives who feast around the Lantern Festival in the New Year are called Chune." It is also recorded in "Introduction to Zhuzhi Ci in Zhenzhou": "A gentleman banquets, saying' please spring'; Shop for a banquet, saying,' Be a God of Wealth'. " Er, it is an ancient wine container. In modern Chinese, "please drink wine in spring" means to treat people to a banquet during the Spring Festival. It's just that people who gather for a banquet are divided into two categories in "Introduction to Zhuzhi Ci in Zhenzhou", one is a gentleman, and the other is a shopkeeper. The purpose of gathering for a banquet is different and the form is the same. Nowadays, people don't make such a fine distinction. "Please celebrate the Spring Festival" and "Being a God of Wealth" are all called "Please celebrate the New Year's Festival". In fact, "Celebrating the New Year's Wine Festival" is an ancient custom in the Tang Dynasty. Daoshi, a monk in the Song Dynasty, said in "Fa Yuan Zhu Lin": "Chang 'an custom in Tang Dynasty, after New Year's Day, he handed in wine, invited people to meet him, and passed the number to sit down with wine." Today, more than 1 years later, the custom of "please celebrate the New Year's Day" is still prevalent, especially in rural areas. People began to invite friends, relatives and neighbors on the second day of the first month. If you invite me, I will invite you again until the eighteenth day of the first month. "Please celebrate the Spring Festival" is a kind of etiquette in the Spring Festival, and it is also the need of people's real life. There are three meanings. First, it is a special respect for guests to treat them during the Chinese New Year, which is at the beginning of the year. Second, during the Spring Festival, there are more dishes at home, and the guests are also more abundant at this time. Third, Yangzhou has been a commercially developed city since ancient times. Yangzhou people have many contacts with other places and work in other places. It is rare for villagers to meet each other at ordinary times. It is convenient for everyone to get together. Of course, today's people are more likely to invite wine, exchange business information and discuss ways to make money. In this sense, it is quite reasonable to say that inviting "New Year's Wine" in Zhenzhou Zhuzhi Ci Yin is a "God of Wealth Meeting". There is a record in "Introduction to Zhenzhou Zhuzhi Ci" pickled in winter wax wind: "After a light snow, people pickled vegetables, saying' cold vegetables', ... and stored them for winter." After Yangzhou people enter the winter, almost every family will pickle all kinds of vegetables and fish, the most common ones are pickled cabbage, pickled radish, salted meat and salted fish. In addition to "pickling", there is also "wind". You can wind vegetables, wind chicken, wind meat, etc., all of which are collectively called "winter wax wind pickling" by Yangzhou people. In the old days, people salted wax in winter in order to "save it for winter". Nowadays, there is abundant food supply, so there is no need to "save it for winter". Today's winter wax wind curing is a method of food processing, because the food after winter wax wind curing has a special "wax fragrance", which is deeply loved by Yangzhou people as "cold dish" and also called "pickles". This kind of dish planted by suburban vegetable farmers seems to be specially used for curing, with fat heads, slender stems, wide leaves, white and tender stems, and green in Ye Er, one or two feet high. This kind of dish is delicious when it is cooked by the tender one. Because it is tender, the soup overflows when it is cooked, so it is also called "soup dish". Wang Zengqi is a writer, but he can also pickle vegetables. In his essay "Food in my hometown", he specifically introduced the pickling method and eating method of pickles with the title of "Pickled mushroom soup", which is quite interesting to read: once it snows, our family drinks pickles soup. I don't know what the reason is. Is it because you can't buy vegetables on a snowy day? That's not necessarily true. Vegetable sellers can't go out, otherwise they will always go public to sell vegetables. This is probably just a habit. When I got up early in the morning and saw snowflakes, I knew it was pickle soup at noon today! Pickles are pickled vegetables. ..... Green vegetables are like rape, but they are much taller. In winter, pickle vegetables, when vegetables are fat. Buy the vegetables in bundles, wash them, dry them to remove moisture, and put them in the jar. A layer of vegetables, a layer of salt, and the code is solid. You can eat whatever you want until the next spring. The new pickles pickled for four or five days are delicious, not salty, thin, tender, crisp and sweet, which is incomparable. In another essay "My Grandparents", Wang Lao also talked about pickled mustard: in winter, … pickled mustard. Pickled "spicy dish"-dried Chinese cabbage, pickled with mustard, opened the altar during the Chinese New Year, the color is as light as gold, spicy and pungent, and extremely fragrant. I have never eaten such delicious pickles since I left my hometown. In addition to pickled vegetables, Wang Lao probably knows how to wind chickens. In My Grandparents, he also talked about how to wind cocks: Wind cocks-big cocks don't remove hair, rub in coarse salt, wrap lotus leaves, and hang them in a ventilated place. It will take about 2 days, and the longer the better. Wang Lao is a native of Gaoyou, Yangzhou. In his novels and essays, he wrote about the home-cooked dishes in Gaoyou, his hometown. Wang Lao not only knows how to eat, but also knows how to eat, so it is ok to call Wang Lao a gourmet. In recent years, someone has compiled Gaoyou's "Wang's Recipe" based on various dishes and foods mentioned in Wang Lao's article. This is really a fantastic idea, very original. It is said that this "Wang's recipe" is still very influential in Gaoyou. There is a poem in Lin Pu's "Records of the Western Hills of Yangzhou" in the Qing Dynasty, which also talks about pickled vegetables in Yangzhou. The poem says: the shoulder vegetables are weathered and taste longer than the autumn fermented grains. Every family in the column is boastful, and it is all fragrant with dung. There is a note at the end of the poem, saying, "Before and after the heavy snow, every family pickles, and all the gardeners pick and send them. On weekdays, when people collect manure and irrigate the garden, they even pay for it with vegetables. " This poem records another custom ―― Mazi cuisine ―― in Yangzhou when the winter wax is preserved in the wind. Ma Zi, a dialect of Yangzhou, is also called "toilet". In the old days, every morning in Yangzhou, you can see farmers pushing dung carts to collect dung in toilets and transport it to farmland as fertilizer. This is called "emptying toilets" in Yangzhou. There is a fixed area for farmers to "pour toilets" into the city, and it is not allowed to grab them indiscriminately. This fixed area is called "dung nest". As the saying goes, fertilizer is a farm treasure, and farming is indispensable. Therefore, farmers attach great importance to this "dung nest". Few people give up, even if they transfer others, they are paid. When farmers get fertilizer in the "dung nest", they think of giving back. What should they give back? Naturally, I grow my own vegetables. So every pickle season, I picked a load of "big dishes" and gave them to my family. This is the so-called "Mazi dishes". When did Yangzhou send "Mazi Cuisine" originated? Due to the lack of records, it is still difficult to determine, but at least it was the custom in Qing Dynasty. Recently, I have seen some folk information from other places, and it is also common for farmers from other places to "pour girls" into cities. However, "pour girls" from other places is not a return of "girls' dishes" by farmers to their main families, but a monthly cleaning fee called "monthly money". For example, during the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China in Beijing, every household had to collect 1 cents to 5 cents, and "saving money" was added during the Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival, and "drinking money" was extorted on cold and summer days and rainy days. Every family has a girl, and they have to urinate every day, but how can they do it? I have to put up with a little blackmail. In contrast, the "Mazi cuisine" in Yangzhou is very human, and the meaning of "it's all dung and residue" can be understood. -New Year Steaming and New Year Dishes Yangzhou people have a lot of things to do before the Spring Festival, but they are all marked with the word "Year". "Introduction to Zhuzhi Ci in Zhenzhou" points out this characteristic of Yangzhou people, among which, it is said that the salted goods before and after the winter solstice are cooked at the right time, and it is called "cooking new year dishes". The people invited the gang to help, saying "help the year". After the sacrifice of the stove, the development of the age is called "annual account". Those who belong to the clan of Qi and Han Su will be given charcoal rafts, saying "Year's Respect", and those who exchange gifts will be called "Year's Gift". ..... Although firewood and rice are also called "Nianchai" and "Nianmi", the word "Nian" is crowned to show the meaning of festival. Among all kinds of "annual events" in Yangzhou, the most important one is "annual steaming". "Nian Zheng" is a steamed snack, which is steamed before the festival and stored at home for enjoyment during the festival. Steamed dim sum in Yangzhou is mainly steamed buns, which is similar to jiaozi in the north. Some scholars have studied jiaozi in the north, pointing out that jiaozi was called wonton in ancient times, and said that "wonton" is also connected with "chaos", implying that the world was in a state of chaos at the beginning of its formation. Because Pangu created the world, there was a world of heaven and earth in the world, so eating wonton in the New Year has the meaning of opening the new year. By analogy, Yangzhou people's steamed buns seem to be more figurative than jiaozi's. The outer skin of steamed buns symbolizes the sky, and the inner stuffing symbolizes the earth. Isn't it more groundbreaking? In fact, another practice of Yangzhou people is more practical. Some people dry steamed buns, steamed buns and cakes a little, and then place them neatly in a conspicuous place at home like a pyramid, and they must wait until the New Year. The people explained that this is called "stacking ingots", which symbolizes the new year and the new year to make money into treasure. No matter how rich or simple Yangzhou people spend the New Year, there are several vegetarian dishes that are essential. One is pea seedlings, peas, also known as Andou in Yangzhou. Stir-fry a dish of Andou seedlings, which means "safe and sound". Secondly, there should be water celery, the stem of which is tubular, and the next year's career can be "passepartout". The third is tofu. With tofu, you can be "steep and rich" in the coming year. These are all derived from the homonym in the dialect and the image understanding. After the reasonable imagination of the people, they sent a good wish. There are also some dishes that are not imaginary wishes, and some dishes have practical significance and local characteristics, which are "ten coriander" and "happy dishes". "Ten coriander" is a simple and easy-to-make home-cooked dish, which is mainly pickles, mixed with shredded carrots, shredded bamboo shoots, shredded dried beans, peanuts and soybeans. Every household should fry it. In the New Year, people eat a lot of meat dishes, which are too greasy. Eating this kind of miscellaneous fried vegetarian dishes makes them feel fragrant and delicious, hence the name "Ten Coriander". The raw material of "Anle cuisine" is Equus dentata, also called Portulaca oleracea. Wang Zengqi also studied this dish. He said, "Amaranth is divided into human amaranth and horse amaranth. Human amaranth is amaranth today, and horse amaranth is purslane. My grandmother picks plump purslane to dry in summer and makes stuffed buns in Chinese New Year. " "Xiaozhi of Xishan in Yangzhou" also confirms Wang Lao's statement, saying: "In April and May, we will take Sargassum and marinate it, named Anle Vegetable, and make steamed buns with stuffing at the end of the year." Ardisia japonica is an annual succulent herb, which can be used as a medicine to treat dysentery. There are many dishes in the New Year, and it is inevitable that there will be negligence. Housewives in Yangzhou use horsetooth vegetables to wrap buns, which is not only a flavor food, but also can ensure the well-being of their families. This is a veritable "happy dish".