Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the dietary customs of New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in the south and the north are obviously different. On New Year's Eve in the north, jiaozi eats more, which means "making friends when young" in homonym. For good luck, northerners often put coins, sugar, peanuts, dates and chestnuts together with meat stuffing into jiaozi in the New Year.

On New Year's Eve in the south, people usually eat Yuanxiao and rice cakes. Yuanxiao is also called "Tangyuan", "Tuanzi" and "Zi Yuan", with more sugar in the middle, which means happy and sweet family reunion. The rice cake is made of glutinous rice, and the homonym is "high every year". Until today, the custom of including jiaozi in the north and south is still very common.

south

About ten days before the festival, people began to buy new year's goods, such as chicken, duck, fish, tea, wine and oil sauce, roasted seeds and nuts in the north and south, and fruit with sugar bait. Before the Chinese New Year, we should prepare the New Year's dinner in advance, put it in a bamboo basket, put fruits such as red orange, Wuling, water chestnut and Jinyuan cake on it, and insert pine and cypress branches, which is called "New Year's dinner".

Auspicious words should be used in New Year's diet. People in the south of the Yangtze River make tea for their guests in the New Year, and put two olives in a tea tray or bowl cover, which is called "treasure-free tea". When eating during the Chinese New Year, there must be fried vegetables, saying that it is "kissing hot"; Be sure to eat bean sprouts, because the shape of soybean sprouts is like "ruyi"; You must eat fish heads at every meal, but you can't eat them all. It is called "fish (surplus) every year".

north

Just as a folk song sings: "Honey melons offer sacrifices to the stove, and the New Year is coming". The first food to enter the festival is honeydew melon, kwantung sugar and other snacks used for "offering sacrifices to the stove". They are made of colloidal maltose, which is sweet and slightly sour. In an era when life is not rich, this is an excellent food. Moreover, there are honeydew melons and Guandong sugar at home, which indicates that the Spring Festival is not far away.

Of course, "Kitchen God" doesn't eat fireworks, and this kind of "bribe" that hopes that "Kitchen God" will speak well in heaven and keep peace in the underworld naturally becomes something in children's mouths.