Chongyang Festival food customs
★Eat Chongyang cake?
Eating flower cakes. Chongyang Festival honors the elderly and ascends to the heights to avoid disasters. Gao" and "high" homophonic, but also "step by step" meaning in it, more auspicious. In the first two days of the Chongyang Festival, people have steamed cake with flour, cake inserted with colorful flags, decorated with pomegranate seeds, chestnut yellow, ginkgo, pine nuts and other fruits; or made into a lion barbaric king of the shape, placed on the cake, called "lion barbaric chestnut cake", which is the Southern Song Dynasty Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou) of the customs. These chestnut cake, just "my generation together to carry a good point when ascending." The northern part of the Chongyang cake, the most famous steamed cake with hair flour flowers and fruits (also known as hair cake). Steamed cake is the flour fermentation buckle into a small bowl, the bottom of each small bowl put on a variety of flowers and fruits, such as jujubes, nuts, candied fruits, red silk, green silk, etc., on the cage after steaming will be poured out of the cake, just a variety of flowers and fruits are in the top of the cake, and was a steamed bread shape. Faced Chongyang cake, sweet and soft, very flavorful. In some parts of our country still retain such a custom: to the Chung Yeung Festival, has been married to the daughter to return to her mother's home to send Chung Yeung cake, generally two large, nine small, take its "two nine" meet the meaning. Northern rural circulating "Mid-Autumn Festival has just passed, and for the Chung Yeung busy, Qiaoqiao Hua Hua cake, only for the female want to mother" ballad, is a reflection of this custom folklore.
★Eating crab?
The Chrysanthemum Festival is in September, autumn chrysanthemum fragrance, crab paste yellow delicious, tender meat, it is a good season to eat crab. The ancients have a poem: "not to Mount Lushan failed to see, not eat crabs failed to abdomen." Song Dynasty poet Mei Yaochen has a poem praising the crab: "Bottle before the crab has been taken away from the flavor, when the day of Brasenia schreberi soup in vain to the people." So to this day, the steamed hairy crabs of Yangcheng Lake are famous both at home and abroad, and in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan restaurants, they are listed as the seasonal delicacies in September, enjoying great reputation. No wonder the famous scholar Zhang Taiyan and his wife had lived in Wuzhong, after eating crab, Mrs. Tang Guoli once recited a poem: "not Yangcheng Lake crab is good, why should life live in Suzhou." Throughout the ages, many writers and artists have eaten crabs, tasted crabs, painted crabs, leaving many anecdotes for posterity, adding a little flavor to people eating crabs.
★Drinking Chrysanthemum Wine
The Chrysanthemum Wine is the most popular wine at the Chrysanthemum Festival. Jiu Jiu" is the same as "Jiu Jiu", and "wine" is also the same, so the saying of drinking chrysanthemum wine on the 9th day of the 9th month was derived. The historical meaning of this saying is that it is a beautiful name for prolonging life and immortality. The folk will also call September "Chrysanthemum Month" or "Chrysanthemum Festival". Therefore, chrysanthemum appreciation is an indispensable activity of the Chrysanthemum Festival.
★Eat persimmons
Eat persimmons custom, there is a legend in our folklore. According to the "odd garden odd" in the introduction: one year, the Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang micro-suits out of the city on a private visit, this day is the Chung Yeung Festival. He has not eaten for a day, feel hungry and thirsty, when traveling to the village of leftover firewood, only to see the family wall down tree withered, are burned for the fire, Zhu Yuanzhang secretly lamented, raised his eyes around, only the northeast corner of the tree persimmons are ripe, and then picking food, about 10 food will be satiated, but also despondent for a long time and go. B not summer, Taizu attack Cai Shi (now Maanshan City, Anhui Province, Cai Shi Jie), take Taiping (now Taiping County, Anhui Province), the road through this, persimmon tree still exists, it will be the previous private visit to eat persimmons here in the matter told to the ministers, and the decree: "sealing the persimmon for the Frost Husbandry, so that the world's people in the Chrysanthemum Festival, all eating persimmons, in memory of.