The origin and customs of Laba Festival. The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is Laba Festival in China, and people have the habit of eating Laba porridge. Laba porridge is also called Babao porridge. According to legend, Laba Festival is the day when the Buddha "became a Taoist". Buddhist temples should follow the story of a shepherdess offering mi, and take eight kinds of fragrant valleys and fruits to make porridge for the Buddha, hence the name Babao porridge. Laba porridge is simple in preparation, rich in nutrition and sweet in taste. In the Song Dynasty, people rushed to follow suit and spread widely, becoming a favorite food of the people.
The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is regarded by the Buddhist community as the day of Buddha's enlightenment. Monks and nuns in the temple often cook "eight-treasure porridge" with eight kinds of food, such as glutinous rice, sesame seeds, Coicis Semen, longan, red dates, mushrooms and lotus seeds, and invite the surrounding villagers to join the holy communion and give alms to the people, old and young, to show their respect for the Buddha. Later, it gradually became a folk self-cooked eight-treasure porridge (called Laba porridge). For that custom of eating Laba porridge.
On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the ancient temples would take fragrant grains and fruits and cook them into porridge to worship the Buddha. People also followed the example of cooking such porridge on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month to eliminate disasters and diseases. In the Song Dynasty, the folk Laba porridge in Hangzhou was cooked with "walnuts, pine nuts, milk mushrooms, persimmons, chestnuts and the like" and rice. Eating Laba porridge was popular everywhere in Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Laba porridge should be filled with eight kinds of raw materials in name, but it is not rigid, ranging from four or five kinds to more than a dozen kinds. Laba porridge in some places is made of glutinous rice, brown sugar and 18 kinds of dried fruits and beans, which is very grand. Rice is mixed with lotus seeds, ginkgo biloba, peanuts, red dates, pine nuts and ginger cinnamon to cook Laba porridge, which has the effects of warming hands and feet and nourishing the body. There are also laba porridge cooked with cowpea, lily, fungus, tofu, arrowhead, etc. These are "fine laba". Laba porridge eaten by ordinary people, mixed with vegetables, soybeans, broad beans, tofu, carrots and water chestnuts, is the so-called "coarse Laba".
In some places in northern China that produce little or no rice, people eat laba noodles instead of laba porridge. The next day, the whole family will eat Laba noodles on the morning of the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. In some mountainous areas where corn is produced, when it comes to Laba, corn is used instead of rice to make it "Laba Mairener". The peasant custom is to cook Laba porridge every Laba day. Laba porridge, that is, all the delicious and edible things in the house can be put in a pot in moderation, and soybeans, mung beans, cowpeas, peas, hard eggs, sweet potatoes, carrots, wheat flour, corn flour, sorghum flour, barley flour, etc. can be cooked into a pot of porridge. It is often said that if you eat all, you will grow all.
The twelfth lunar month is the year. You must eat all the whole grains and vegetables all the year round, so that you can have comprehensive nutrition. This is to pray for human health and family prosperity! The second is to eat all, harvest all, and after the twelfth lunar month, it will be the new year. When eating Laba porridge, you will eat all the grains and vegetables that grew in the field that year, and you will not abandon anything, indicating that farmers love everything they have harvested on the land. I hope that in the new year, all crops will grow well and be enriched.