Traditional snacks in Genghe Town During traditional folk festivals, urban and rural residents mostly prepare their own traditional festival snacks. The more common ones are as follows: rice noodles, dumplings, fried rice dumplings, soup balls, wrapped steamed rice dumplings, sticky rice sticks, noodles
Corn, vermicelli, taro, taro cake, radish cake, sweet potato buns, and sponge cake.
Among them, the rice noodle and steamed rice dumpling snacks are very famous. They won the title of Gaoming's top ten famous snacks in the 2004 Gaoming Food Festival competition.
Genghe Town also has some famous delicacies, such as Heshui dog meat and delicious and crispy mountain snails.
Customs of the time (1) Spring Festival The residents of Genghe Town call New Year’s Eve and Spring Festival (the first day of the lunar calendar) the Chinese New Year.
Before the festival, villagers, whether rich or poor, try their best to buy new year's goods and prepare festive food. Specifically, they include: steamed rice dumplings, rice dumplings, fried dumplings, fried rice cakes, and fried rice cakes.
On New Year's Eve, the whole family has a reunion dinner together.
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, people dress brightly and greet each other "Congratulations on getting rich". The elders distribute red packets to the younger ones. Everyone smiles to avoid quarrels. Every village beats gongs and drums, and lions visit every household to pay New Year greetings.
On this day, people are forbidden to clean, work in the fields, or visit relatives and friends.
The second to sixth day of the Lunar New Year is a day for visiting relatives and friends.
(2) Qingming Festival Qingming Festival is a festival for every household in Genghe Township to remember their deceased relatives.
Local people have the habit of going to their ancestors' graves to worship on the Tomb Sweeping Day, commonly known as "Xingzhengqing". People bring roasted pigs, cakes, and incense candles to their ancestors' graves to pay homage to their ancestors and pray for their family's safety while remembering their deceased friends.
Since the funeral reform, people have changed from worshiping in ancestral graves to worshiping in cemeteries.
(3) On the third day of the second lunar month, every household prepares Jiaozi (snacks) to entertain visiting relatives and friends (mostly married women go back to their parents’ homes to eat Jiaozi). The types of Jiaozi include oil horns, sticky rice horns, and moxa horns.
Aijiao (Ai has the same pronunciation as "to endure", meaning that eating Aijiao will make you strong, able to work well, and energetic).
(4) Some villages will cook fried rice dumplings (also known as puzheng) on ??the third day of the third lunar month, which symbolizes family harmony and unity.
(5) The Ghost Festival falls on the 14th day of the seventh lunar month, commonly known as the Bon Festival and also the Ghost Festival. At night, women burn incense and candles in front and behind their houses, spread wine, rice and fruits, and burn colored paper.
However, some villages in Heshui do not celebrate the festival on the 14th day of the seventh lunar month. Instead, they burn incense and clothes before the 14th day of the seventh lunar month to celebrate the festival.
(6) The winter solstice falls on the day of the winter solstice, which is more suitable for people's custom of eating soup balls (also called winter balls). In ancient times, there was a saying of "Winter New Year". In the past, married women were not allowed to celebrate the festival at their parents' home. In some villages, there is a "
It is the custom of eating raw fish and dog meat during the winter solstice.
There are other festivals such as the Lantern Festival, the Ox King's Birthday on the eighth day of April, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Double Ninth Festival, etc. The celebration methods are similar to those in other towns and villages.