The 15th day of the first month is a traditional festival in China-Lantern Festival. On this festival, Tianjin people have two most important folk activities, one is to eat Yuanxiao, and the other is to enjoy lanterns. Tianjin belongs to the northern region, and the traditional dietary custom in the north is to eat Yuanxiao on the fifteenth day of the first month, which means auspicious reunion and rolling financial resources.
People in Tianjin usually eat Yuanxiao, with sesame seeds, peanuts or hawthorn as stuffing, cut into small pieces, poured into baskets, rolled up with glutinous rice flour and shaken. Every region in the north will have its own unique food and customs, and almost every kind of food has their beautiful expectations for the New Year.
Tianjin people have the custom of steaming "mice" on the Lantern Festival.
The custom of "mouse" in Tianjin is very special. But this "mouse" is made of noodles, not a real mouse. The old Tianjin Wei family is usually busy on the fourteenth day of the first month, steaming "hedgehog mice" with flour.
Hedgehog cut out fine triangular tips and used sorghum rice as eyes. The mouse cut off four legs and a long tail and used black beans as eyes. On the backs of hedgehogs and mice, and on the wooden milling heads, there are two kinds of gold ingots made of flour, which are placed in pairs, respectively in the corners of windowsills, doorpiers and kitchen stoves, with their heads facing outwards. The next afternoon, the hedgehog and mouse heads everywhere were turned from the outside to the house to show that they had come home with treasure.