China Lunar New Year Spring Festival is the most grand festival for the people of China. There are a whole set of food customs during the Spring Festival, and the food Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month is the finale of the Chinese New Year food customs. However, the names of Yuanxiao in the north and south of China are different. Southerners call Yuanxiao "Tangyuan", and the making methods of Tangyuan and Yuanxiao are different.

Southerners prefer to make dumplings by themselves during the Lantern Festival. They knead dough with hot water and glutinous rice flour, then stir walnuts, peanuts, sesame seeds, jujube paste and red bean paste into stuffing, then grab a small dough and knead it with both hands to form a bare round ball.

Whether it's Yuanxiao or Tangyuan, it's cooked in water and eaten. It's sweet and smooth with a bite, which is very delicious. According to the folk saying, eating Yuanxiao or Tangyuan on Lantern Festival is a homonym in Chinese, which means "reunion".

What traditional food do you eat in the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month in the south?

Dongguan Lantern Festival Chixiang Pills

Besides glutinous rice balls, there is also a kind of food that Yuanxiao must eat in Dongguan-fragrant pills.

Xiangwan is round, with a diameter of about 1 cm. It is made of winter solstice powder formed by soaking glutinous rice in dry land for 7 days. It is hollow and melts in the mouth. In Dongguan, when friends and relatives visit each other, they will always receive a few fragrant pills from the host's family, which means that they have become attached to people.

Boil dumplings and eat oil balls

It is a common custom to eat glutinous rice balls on the Lantern Festival. In Shanglin and Jingxi of Guangxi, there is also the custom of eating oil balls (also called "fried piles" and "oil piles" in some places). The food is different, but the meaning is the same. Both kinds of food are small round balls, indicating reunion. The word "Tuan" of the original "oil ball" is not the word "Tuan" of this reunion, but the word "Yan", which means an action of poking the surface of the oil ball, but with the evolution of time and the integration of culture, it has evolved into the present "Tuan".

What food do you eat on Lantern Festival?

1, Yuanxiao

"Lantern Festival is played on the fifteenth day of the first month," of course, Lantern Festival is an essential food. However, Yuanxiao is a northern food. It is made by cutting the stuffing into pieces, dipping it in water and rolling it out in a container filled with glutinous rice flour, which is different from the dumplings in the south.

2. Tangyuan

South glutinous rice balls, North Yuanxiao. Different from the north, southerners eat glutinous rice balls for the Lantern Festival, which means reunion. The method of making glutinous rice balls is simpler than Yuanxiao, which is similar to wrapping jiaozi. It is to add water to glutinous rice noodles and make them into balls, leave them for 1 hour, grab a small ball of noodles and knead them into pieces, then wrap them in stuffing and knead them into balls.

3. Lettuce

Guangdong people like to "steal" lettuce and cook it with cakes during the Lantern Festival. It is said that this kind of food represents auspiciousness. Cantonese people are calm and down-to-earth, and they have the best intentions for festivals. Lettuce, which is most commonly used in festive occasions such as the opening of new stores, is also an essential holiday item for the Lantern Festival. Lettuce, which often becomes a common vegetable in the southern dining table, is homophonic with "making money", so it is also regarded as a festive thing symbolizing wealth and good fortune.

4. Lantern Festival tea

In Shaanxi and other places, there is a custom of eating Yuanxiao tea, that is, putting all kinds of vegetables and fruits in hot soup noodles, much like the ancient "Yuanxiao porridge". This tea increases the intake of cellulose, minerals and vitamins, and is not as greasy as ordinary Yuanxiao. It has a neutralizing effect on the acidic constitution caused by eating more animal food in festivals, and also makes Yuanxiao more comprehensive in nutrition.

5. Camellia oleifera

Eating on the night of the Lantern Festival, the ground says "fifteen flat, sixteen yuan", one day to eat jiaozi, one day to eat Yuanxiao; In the mountainous area, it is "fifteen dozen camellia oleifera, sixteen pinch flat food". It is the so-called "ten miles of different customs." Making tea is to stir the tea noodles with chopsticks to make camellia oleifera, also called noodle tea.

6. Oil hammer

In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, rice porridge or bean porridge with gravy was used as the festive food for the Lantern Festival. However, this food is mainly used for sacrifices, and it is not a holiday food. It was not until the Tang Dynasty that Zheng Wangzhi's "The Record of the Chef" recorded: "Dieting in the middle of the year, going to the oil hammer." The method of making an oil hammer is similar to the fried Yuanxiao of future generations, according to a record in Shangshi Order quoted from Taiping Guangji and Lushi Miscellanies. Some people call it "the pearl of oil painting".

7. jiaozi

On the fifteenth day of the first month, people in the north have the habit of eating jiaozi, while people in Henan have the custom and tradition of "fifteen flat and sixteen round" for the Lantern Festival, so they should eat jiaozi on the fifteenth day of the first month. Jiaozi is a kind of folk food with a long history, which is very popular among the people. There is a saying among the people that "it's delicious but not as good as jiaozi".

8, jujube cake

People in western Henan like to eat jujube cakes during the Lantern Festival, which means good luck. Jujube cake was originally an imperial cake in the Qing Dynasty. It is fragrant and sweet, and contains nutrients such as vitamin C, protein, calcium, iron and vitamins, which can not only tonify the spleen and stomach, but also benefit qi and promote fluid production. It also has the effects of protecting the liver, increasing muscle strength, caring skin and preventing aging.

9. Sticky cake

Sticky cake is also called rice cake. In addition to Yuanxiao and noodles, there are people who eat sticky cakes during the Lantern Festival. Sun Simiao, a famous doctor in the Tang Dynasty, wrote in "Prescription to Prepare for a Urgent Need, Food Treatment" that "it is sweet, slightly cold, non-toxic, heat-removing, and qi-benefiting." After the Tang Dynasty, there were also records of eating cakes during the Lantern Festival in the Yuan Dynasty.

10, face lamp

Speaking of the custom of Lantern Festival, people usually think of eating glutinous rice balls, enjoying lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns. However, there is another custom that has been handed down from the Han Dynasty, that is, bean flour lanterns at 15 o'clock in the first month. Lantern Festival lights are auspicious lights, which can drive away evil spirits and diseases. Therefore, squeezing bean flour lights on the fifteenth day of the first month is the common people's prayer for happiness and prosperity in the new year.

1 1, bean dough

People in Kunming like to eat bean dough, which is similar to Yuanxiao. They stir-fry beans and grind them, then make them into balls and cook them with water. It tastes good.

12, bad soup

Taizhou area eats bad soup after seeing lanterns on the fourteenth day of the first month every year. Stir-fry the bad soup with shredded pork, shredded winter bamboo shoots, mushrooms, fungus, fresh ducklings, dried beans, oil bubbles, Sichuan bean boards, spinach, etc., and then add a little rice flour to cook it into a salty paste food. The bad soup drunk on the fifteenth day of the first month is sweet, made of sweet potato powder or lotus root starch with lotus seeds, sweet dates, longan and so on.

13, steamed bread, wheat cake

There is a custom of eating steamed bread and wheat cakes in Pujiang, Zhejiang Province during the Lantern Festival. It is said that the reason is that the steamed bread is made of dough and the wheat cake is round, which means "a happy reunion of the hair and grandchildren". In Shangyuan County, Changde, Hunan Province, pepper is used as soup, and leeks and fruits are added to entertain guests, which is called "time soup".

14, noodles

There is a folk proverb in Jiangbei area, which says, "Go to Lantern Festival, leave noodles behind, and look forward to next year after eating them." Local people want to eat noodles on the fifteenth night of the first month, which sounds irrelevant to Lantern Festival, but it also means praying for good luck. "Records of the Year of the Emblem" contains: "On the 18th day of the first month, the lights went down, and people spat on their faces. As the saying goes,' When the lights went up, the lights went down', and each family celebrated for itself." Eating noodles when the lights are off symbolizes the meaning of continuous celebration.