It's the Spring Festival. Every Spring Festival, besides enjoying family reunion, another essential item is eating. Among all kinds of delicious food, jiaozi is indispensable, at least in the north. So when did the custom of eating jiaozi in the New Year begin? Why do you want to eat jiaozi during the Spring Festival?

Customs from the Ming Dynasty

Since the Ming Dynasty, there has been a record of eating jiaozi on the first day of the Lunar New Year. Liu Ruoyu in the Ming Dynasty said in "Random thoughts" that on the first day of the first month, the palace "starts from five o'clock ... drinking pepper and cypress wine and eating snacks means eating flat food." Or there is a dollar or two hidden in it, and the person who gets it will have a year's blessing. "The flat food here is jiaozi, which started in the Yuan Dynasty and may be the Mongolian name of jiaozi.

By the Qing Dynasty, it was very common to eat jiaozi in the north during the New Year. At the same time, jiaozi had another stage name in the Qing Dynasty: Boiling steamed buns, which originated from Manchu, because Manchu called pasta steamed buns and boiled jiaozi steamed buns. The Chronicle of Yanjing in the Qing Dynasty said, "No matter how rich or poor, they all take white flour as the tail (jiaozi), and eating is called cooking." The whole country is natural, there is no difference. "Of course, this is a bit exaggerated. It is impossible for the whole country to eat it, but it is possible for northern countries to eat it.

Then we can't help asking, why should we eat jiaozi during the Spring Festival?

One view is that jiaozi is eaten during the New Year because of jiaozi's homophonic symphony. According to the ancient time-keeping method, midnight is from 23: 00 p.m. to 1 the next day, which is also called midnight, and 12 at midnight is the middle of midnight, which is the time when the old and the new days alternate. Thirty? 1? Three o'clock at midnight is not only the turning point of the old and new days, but also the turning point of the old and new years, so when twelve o'clock arrives, people will enter the new year from the old year, which is called "making friends when they are young". And the difficulty of the New Year, eating jiaozi in the New Year, is to hope that we can successfully pass this dangerous moment of the transition between the old and the new.

However, there are many problems in this view that cannot be solved. First, many areas in the north, including palaces in the Ming Dynasty, called jiaozi a "flat food", which has been called since the Yuan Dynasty. They don't mean jiaozi to eat jiaozi in the New Year. Second, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Spring Festival was the most important festival. We know that the specific food we eat in the New Year must have more symbolic meaning, not just for appetizing. Once this food is determined, it has considerable vitality and will not change easily. Jiaozi was not popular in the Spring Festival before the Ming Dynasty. Why did it change to jiaozi in the Ming and Qing Dynasties? Didn't you need to take the meaning of "making friends at a young age" before? Therefore, the explanation of the argument that "Jiaozi is getting older" is generally effective, and some of them are superficial.

To solve this problem, we must first find out when there will be jiaozi.

The earliest document is recorded in the Song Dynasty, but it is called "groove". Is it because jiaozi looks like a triangle with horns on both sides? I'm afraid not. In fact, the word "jiao" in ancient Chinese has the meaning of wrapping and packaging, which is the same as the meaning of "Bao". Pasta made of dough wrapped with stuffing is called jiaozi, just like another kind of food steamed stuffed bun that appeared in Song Dynasty. They are named in the same way. Later, in the process of continuous diffusion and communication, "groove" was misinformed as "intersection".

But the Song Dynasty was not the earliest time when jiaozi was born, because it is certain that jiaozi in Xinjiang was unearthed in the Tang Dynasty. ? 1? three

So what was the name of jiaozi in the Tang Dynasty? The answer may be wonton.

It turns out that wonton and jiaozi, which we distinguish today, were collectively called wonton before the Song Dynasty, just as pasta was collectively called cake. Just because the pasta was very developed in the Song Dynasty, the variety of products became very many, and a single name was not suitable, so there was differentiation, and the originally indistinguishable foods had different names. Generally speaking, jiaozi is bigger and thicker than wonton, but people can't distinguish them well. Until today, there are still many places where jiaozi and wonton are often confused. ? 1? three

Originally it was a special food from the winter solstice.

At first, jiaozi was not a special food for the Spring Festival, but a food for winter. The custom of eating wonton from winter solstice appeared in the Tang Dynasty and continued until the Song Dynasty. At that time, there was a proverb that "winter solstice is a chaotic year (festival)". It is the predecessor of noodles. In other words, people in the Song Dynasty wanted to eat noodles during the Spring Festival, but now the jiaozi they want to eat during the Spring Festival comes from their winter solstice custom.

There is some truth in this change. The winter solstice in Song Dynasty was the heaviest, and the folk winter solstice even exceeded the festival. There is a saying that "fat in winter and thin in years". In fact, Song people also regarded the winter solstice as a festival. Song's father Meng said: "Winter is the most important festival in the capital. Although the poor have accumulated fake loans in a year, it is easier for them to get new clothes, prepare meals and enjoy ancestor worship, just like the New Year. " On the night before the winter solstice, people should also keep vigil, which is called accepting winter, just like observing the New Year.

However, since Yuan and Ming Dynasties, the status of winter solstice has been declining. Finally, when I was in Ming Daizong, the winter solstice festival was officially abolished. Under these changes, many customs from the winter solstice gradually moved to the Spring Festival, and wonton, the original special food from the winter solstice, also became the food of the New Year. ? 1? three

Now we know that jiaozi, which must be eaten in the New Year since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, originated from the wonton that was eaten from the Tang and Song Dynasties to the winter. So why do we eat wonton on the solstice of Tang and Song Dynasties?

First of all, let's start with the solar terms from the winter solstice. On the solstice of winter, for the ancestors living in the Central Plains, the sunshine time is the least, the day is the shortest and the night is the longest. We know that since the Han Dynasty, the concept of Yin-Yang and Five Elements has prevailed in the ruling and opposition parties. Therefore, from the perspective of yin and yang, the sun corresponds to the yang, and the solstice in winter is the time when the yin is full.

Yin and Yang are transformed into each other, and the moment when Yin is flourishing is the moment when Yang is pregnant and about to be born. At this juncture of transformation, people can't be idle, so we must take various measures to break the yin and help the yang, so that Yang Can can break through the cocoon smoothly. It can be said that all kinds of activities on the day of winter solstice were originally carried out to break the yin and release the yang.