most Qiang people have two meals a day, that is, after breakfast, they go out to work, take a bun (corn flour bun) and eat it in the field at noon, which is called "topping". Go home for dinner after work in the afternoon. Most staple foods are inseparable from steaming. Often eaten noodle steaming is to steam corn flour into granules in a retort, which can be eaten as rice. Sometimes, washed rice is mixed with corn flour, or corn flour is mixed with rice for steaming, which is called "gold wrapped in silver" or "silver wrapped in gold". It is also one of the main daily foods of Qiang people to make steamed buns with wheat flour and corn flour and bake them on a fire pond. In many areas, the Qiang people also like to eat corn flour and tofu pudding, fermented with water, steamed into bean buns, or ground tender corn into steamed buns. Cooked with wheat flour and meat slices is called "Huimian Noodles"; Boiling water and corn flour are boiled into paste, which is called "noodle soup". If you continue to add corn flour to thicken it, it is called "stirring the ball" because chopsticks can be picked up. They are all staple foods that you often eat. When eating dumplings, you should also eat sauerkraut soup made of sauerkraut soaked with Chinese cabbage and round roots (turnips) to stimulate your appetite. Commonly used corn, wheat and beans are fried first and then ground into fried noodles, which are usually eaten when traveling or grazing. When eating potatoes, Qiang people like to cook the whole potato, then peel it, mash it into mud, make it into potato Ciba, and fry it in oil or with honey. You can also use sliced potato, pickled cabbage and sliced meat to make soup.
Because the time to eat fresh vegetables is only a few months, I often eat Chinese cabbage, pickled cabbage soaked in radish leaves and pickled vegetables all the year round. The meat is mainly cattle, sheep, pigs and chicken, and also fish and hunting animal meat. Generally, the Qiang people scattered in mountainous areas don't eat fresh pork very often. They all slaughter pigs, remove their hair, cut them in half or cut them into several large pieces, and hang them on the beams to smoke and bake them to make "pig fat". The storage time is generally one year. When eating them, they first cook them with vegetables, pick up the pig fat after cooking, cut them into rectangular pieces and put them into bowls for eating. Second, the raw pickled pork fat is cut into small pieces and fried together with the dish, which is used to replace the oil with pork fat and add some pepper and pepper to improve the taste. When killing Niannian pigs, the Qiang people like to fill the pig's blood into the pig's large intestine, which is called blood sausage after cooking. Blood sausage is also a dish for banquet guests when they eat wine. Some also mix pig blood with buckwheat to make blood buns to eat. Qiang people often put fresh pork in the belly of newly slaughtered pigs, add salt, pepper, etc., tie it tightly and air-dry, and make it into a "stuffed belly" that will last for a long time.
The wine that the Qiang people generally drink is called Zajiu, which is called "Rimaixi" in Maoxian Qiang language, which means Qiang people's wine. The method of making Zajiu is to cook highland barley, mix with distiller's yeast, seal it in the jar, and ferment it for 7-8 days before drinking. Instead of drinking wine, the Qiang people opened the jar and sucked it with a thin bamboo tube. When drinking, they took turns drinking, and continuously injected cold water until the taste was light.
The Qiang people's daily cookers are very distinctive. They often set up an iron tripod on a fire pit, and when cooking, they put an iron pan on it to heat it or bake food. The elegant iron tripod is also inlaid with silver ornaments.
Festivals, Ritual Sacrifices Food Custom Every festival, wedding, funeral, sacrifice, gathering, entertaining guests or changing jobs, besides abundant food, wine is also necessary. As a Qiang proverb says, "it is difficult to sing without wine, but there are many songs with wine, and it is difficult to entertain guests without wine." When you get married, you eat "making wine" and the banquet guests eat "drinking wine". The wine brewed on the Double Ninth Festival is called chong yang wine, which needs to be stored for more than one year before drinking. chong yang wine is an essential wine during the Double Ninth Festival because of its long storage time, purple color and mellow flavor. Another kind of drink called steamed wine is made by steaming corn flour and mixing it with distiller's yeast. When drinking it, it has both the fragrance of wine and the top meal, similar to the mash of Han nationality. Regardless of the New Year's Day or the reception of guests, the Qiang people take "Nine" as the auspicious occasion, so nine bowls should be placed at the banquet, and the dishes are the same as Sichuan cuisine. Stew the whole chicken, and it is customary to hold up the chicken head with a bamboo stick to make it hold high. Serve a guest (such as an uncle) with the head of a chicken.
The first day of October in the lunar calendar is the Qiang New Year Festival. The New Year's Banquet is also called "Harvest Wine". On the New Year's Day, the whole village people went to the "Shenshulin" to make a vow to burn cypress incense to honor their ancestors and gods, to make buckwheat noodles dumplings with diced meat and tofu, and some to make cattle, sheep, horses, chickens and other animals with different shapes with flour as sacrifices. The next day, a family dinner was held to invite the married daughter back to her family. Carry out various festival activities. The mountain worship meeting to pray for a bumper harvest is a sacrificial activity in the whole village. Except for married women, people in the whole village should bring wine, meat and buns to the meeting. The head of the meeting will be held by all households in the village in turn. At that time, a black ram, a red rooster, a jar of wine, 3 kg of pork, a bucket of highland barley, 13 kg of steamed buns made of flour, incense wax, firecrackers, paper money, etc. will be prepared first, and arranged according to the regulations. Xu (a wizard) will preside over the sacrifice, praying to the gods and mountain gods to bless the people in the whole village for a long life, and the goats will be slaughtered and cooked, and distributed to all households together with other foods, called "scattered molecules" Finally, everyone sat on the floor and tasted their own sacrificial food.
When the Qiang people get married and hold a happy event, the groom should accompany the bride back to her mother's house, and the mother's house should prepare "Huimen wine", and relatives and friends should give gifts to the newlyweds, and wish the bride and groom happiness and a long life together. In some places of Qiang people, there is also the custom of "teasing the groom". That is, at the Huimen wine banquet, the bride's family will give the groom four-foot chopsticks, and a few chopsticks made of potatoes will be added at the back of the chopsticks. The groom will be asked to use these chopsticks and sandwich dishes made of diced meat and beans through several oil lamps. If the chopsticks are too long to hold the dishes, or the oil lamps burn his chin, he will be fined. This kind of activity is both a holiday dinner and an entertainment.
Typical food The Qiang people pay special attention to medicinal diet. The typical medicinal diet dishes are: mutton with soup; Sheep return to soup; Pork is stewed with Eucommia ulmoides 1-2 times. All three can tonify the kidney. Stewed chicken with Radix Astragali or Radix Astragali (Radix Angelicae Sinensis and Radix Codonopsis are also acceptable) and a few stewed pork can also replenish blood and qi. Stewed duck with Cordyceps can nourish yin, replenish lung and kidney.