(1) Food customs during the Spring Festival. On the first day of the first lunar month of the lunar calendar, during the Spring Festival, every household across the country will carry out New Year greeting activities, and food is an important part of it.

About ten days before the festival, people start busy purchasing new year's goods. They must buy enough chicken, duck, fish, tea, wine, oil sauce, north and south roasted seeds and nuts, candy, bait and fruits.

It is a custom in the south of the Yangtze River to make New Year's rice in advance before the New Year, put it in a bamboo basket, put red oranges, black water chestnuts, water chestnuts and other fruits and ingot cakes on it, and put pine and cypress branches on it, which is called "New Year's rice".

The New Year's rice for northerners is made of gold and silver rice (yellow and white rice). The rice is garnished with dates, chestnuts, longans, fragrant branches, and pine and cypress branches.

Northerners eat dumplings during the Chinese New Year.

Some of the dumplings are filled with sugar, with the intention of having a sweet New Year; some are filled with peanuts (called longevity fruits), with the intention that eating them will make people live longer; one dumpling is filled with a coin, which is intended to make money.

Whoever eats it will be "lucky and prosperous".

Dumplings are shaped like ingots. During the New Year, noodles and dumplings are cooked together, which is called "gold thread wearing ingots".

New Year's food and drinks must be in auspicious terms.

People in Jiangnan make tea during the New Year to honor guests, and put two olives on the tea tray or on the lid of the bowl, which is called "Wubao tea".

During the New Year's meal, stir-fried green vegetables are a must, which is said to be "hot and affectionate"; bean sprouts must be eaten because soybean sprouts look like "ruyi"; fish heads must be eaten at every meal, but cannot be eaten all, which is called "eating with fish left over".

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You must eat rice cakes in the New Year, as the north and the south share the same wind.

Eat rice cakes to wish you a "higher life every year".

Suzhou's sweet-scented osmanthus sugar rice cake, Ningbo's water-milled rice cake, and Beijing's red date rice cake and mince fruit rice cake are all excellent New Year cakes.

(2) New Year’s Eve Food Customs New Year’s Eve falls on the night of the 30th day of the twelfth lunar month (the twenty-ninth day of the lunar month).

It means that on this night, when "the month is over and the year is over", people have to get rid of the old and replace the old with the new.

On New Year's Eve, according to the old custom, after paying homage to the ancestors of heaven and earth, the whole family gathers together to have a "New Year's Eve dinner", which is called "family fun" or "reunion dinner".

It is very typical for Jiangnan people to have New Year's Eve dinner with four cold pots, four hot pots for stir-frying and one hot pot on the table.

A must-have bowl of green vegetables or spinach vegetables on the New Year's Eve dinner table is called "Chang Geng Cai"; some also prepare eggplant (eggplant) vegetables.

Roasted vegetables are made from dried eggplants and other fruits and vegetables. This is the first dish everyone takes when eating New Year’s Eve dinner.

Because Wu's sound is "falling" and "yue" makes the sound.

It is a custom to eat dumplings on New Year's Eve in the north.

Stay safe when you are old.

It is eaten at the end of Zishi and is called "Gengnianjiaozi (dumplings)".

When northerners make dumplings on New Year's Eve, they pay attention to thin skin, sufficient filling, and tight pinching. They are not allowed to break when making dumplings, and they are not allowed to boil when they are put into the pot.

If you accidentally break a dumpling, you can only say "earn it". It is taboo to say the word "rotten" or "broken".

On New Year's Eve, families in rural areas across Jiangsu "paint rice hoards", that is, they use small leaky cattail bags filled with lime powder to print dense lime marks (ingot-shaped or halberd-shaped) around the grain hoards and on the ground outdoors.

To show that property, first and foremost, food is securely protected.

On New Year's Eve, "one night in a row", after the New Year's Eve dinner, the family sits around the fire table, peels oranges and eats peanuts, which is called "keeping the year old".

Finally, children bid farewell to their elders, and the elders give "lunar New Year money" to the children. In some places, the elders place oranges, lychees and other fruits next to the children's bedside pillows late at night on New Year's Eve. They are called "lunar New Year fruits" to make the children happy.

When you wake up in the morning on the first day of the Lunar New Year, you will feel the joy of the New Year. (3) New Year celebrations and food "Erya Shitian" says: "Nian is the name of the crop that ripens once every year, so it is named after the year."

"Nian" is regarded as a symbol of harvest. Another theory is that the word "Nian" is a pictographic character according to the writing method of the ancients. It has a head and a tail, with its four legs spread out, like a big gecko. It is a terrible and ominous beast.

, if you don't meet it, you will spend it peacefully, so everyone gathers together to cook some good things and have a meal. This kind of celebration is called "New Year". Now let's take a look at the Chinese New Year's diet.

From the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, there was a custom of drinking "Tusu wine", "cypress leaf wine" and "peach soup" during the annual festivals in the Yangtze River Basin. Drinking Tusu wine was said to ward off the plague. Cypress leaf wine was made from cypress leaves soaked in wine.

Cypress is an evergreen tree, and its leaves wither and last. Drinking cypress wine means longevity. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the food customs on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have been significantly different between the south and the north.

Making dumplings means "Geng Sui Jiao Zi" (Geng Sui Jiao Zi) in homophone. Some people put sugar in the dumplings to pray for a sweeter life in the coming year. Others put a coin in individual dumplings, and whoever eats them will be lucky in the new year.

On New Year's Eve in the South, people usually eat Yuanxiao and rice cakes. The Yuanxiao is also called "tangyuan", "duanzi", and "yuanzi". The middle is filled with sugar, which means a happy and sweet family reunion. The rice cake is made of glutinous rice.

The homophonic pronunciation means "every year is high". To this day, the custom of making dumplings during the New Year in the north and making glutinous rice balls during the Chinese New Year is still very common. (4) Dumplings Dumplings are a folk food with a long history and are very popular among the people.

There is a saying that "nothing tastes better than dumplings". During the Spring Festival, dumplings have become an indispensable seasonal dish. According to the "Guang Ya" written by Zhang Yi of the Three Kingdoms Dynasty, the dumplings were shaped like a crescent moon and were called "Dumplings".

The food "wonton" is basically similar in shape to today's dumplings. By the Northern and Southern Dynasties, wonton "shaped like a crescent moon and was eaten all over the world".