It is customary to eat dumplings on both the Rising Winter and the Winter Solstice, the difference being that it is a little more common to eat dumplings on the Winter Solstice.

It is customary to eat dumplings in some areas at the beginning of winter, and by and large, at the winter solstice. In the Beijing-Tianjin area, people have the custom of eating dumplings at the beginning of winter, some folklore experts believe that the beginning of winter is the intersection of the autumn and winter seasons, it is "the time of the cross", so this time to eat dumplings have "obedience to the will of heaven" meaning. Moreover, our country used to be a farming society, and people who worked for a year used the day of winter to take a break and reward the family for their hard work over the year.

The custom of eating dumplings is very universal, and many festivals and holidays eat dumplings. Dumplings are eaten on the first day of the three ambushes, on the day winter begins, on the winter solstice, and on New Year's Day. But these customs of eating dumplings are mostly related to the northern parts of the country.

Related Legends

The eating of dumplings on the winter solstice is said to be related to Zhang Zhongjing, a famous medical doctor at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Zhang Zhongjing was born into a family of declining official scribblers. His father, Zhang Zonghan, was a scholar. He worked as an official in the imperial court. Due to the special conditions of his family, he had access to many canonical books since he was a child. He was a diligent learner and had a passion for medicine.

Toward the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were many years of war, and "the people abandoned agriculture"; the urban areas were mostly deserted, and the people were displaced and starved. The people were displaced, starving and suffering. There were successive outbreaks of plague in various places, so he was furious to study medicine and aspired to be a doctor who could relieve the people's suffering. Later, Zhang Zhongjing really became a good doctor, and was known as "the Saint of Medicine, the Ancestor of Formulas".

The story goes that when Zhang Zhongjing returned to his hometown in his old age, it was a snowy winter. Many people who were displaced by the war in the streets had nothing to eat and no clothes to cover their bodies, and many of them had their ears rotted by freezing. Seeing this situation, Zhang Zhongjing could not bear it in his heart, so he caused a medical hut to be set up on the east side of Nanyang Pass. Let his disciples make stuffing with mutton, chili peppers and some cold-repelling herbs, and then wrap them into dumplings. Alms were given to the people. The dumplings cured many folks of their frozen ears.

Since then, every winter solstice into the nine, everyone has to compete for the dumplings, there is a proverb "winter solstice dumplings do not freeze ear".