Awajiu Festival is on February 19, 2023.

Awajiu Porridge is one of the famous dishes unique to the Shiyi area of Fuzhou, Fujian, and is a sweet porridge cooked during the Awajiu Festival. Production materials to water chestnuts, peanuts, jujubes, cinnamon mainly, can add lotus seeds, white fruit, etc., and white rice mixed with glutinous rice with brown sugar with cooking until cooked or en rotten into porridge can be eaten.

Au Jiu Festival (29th day of the first month of the lunar calendar) is a traditional folk festival unique to Fuzhou, "Au Jiu Festival" is also known as "after nine festival", "filial piety nine festival" and "Send Poor Festival". Early in the morning on this day, every family cooks Aojiu porridge, which is used to offer sacrifices to ancestors or gifts to friends and relatives. Married daughters, but also be sure to send a bowl of "au jiu congee" back to her mother's home, filial piety and honor their parents (usually on the twenty-eighth day of the first month, and some of them have to add the plane, eggs, pig's feet, etc.).

The Legend of "Aojiu"

Meilian's mother, Mrs. Ching-Ti, was very rich at home, but she was mean and greedy, and her son was very moral and filial. When her son was away from home, she slaughtered animals and cooked them every day, without any thought for her son, and never practiced good deeds. After her death, she was sent to the netherworld to be punished with bitter tortures. In order to save his mother, Meilian became a monk and gained divine powers, and went to the hell to see his suffering mother. Meglian could not bear it in his heart, but with his mother's sins in her life, she could not get out of the hungry ghosts' path, and what she was given to eat turned into coals of fire before it reached her mouth.

Meilian was at his wits' end and was so sad that he prayed to the Buddha. The Buddha taught Meilian to build a bon on July 15 to feed his mother through the power of the monks of the ten directions. Meilian followed the Buddha's advice, and thus came the Buddhist legend of setting up a bon on the 15th of the 7th month to feed the monks of the ten directions in order to overthrow the dead. The mother of Meilian was able to have enough to eat and passed on to the human world, where she was born as a dog. After seven days and seven nights of praying, Meilian was able to get his mother out of her dog body and into heaven. This Buddhist story has been passed down from the Western Jin Dynasty to the present day, urging the son to perform filial piety, and the metaphor of "there is no such thing as a parent in the world".

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Argujiu Congee