Tea and Fruit Festival, also known as "Hangcun" or "Hangshe", is one of the folk festivals popular in Songlong River Valley (including Baitu, Jindu, Huilong, Li Antang and other towns) in Zhaoqing, Guangdong. The Tea Fruit Festival originated in ancient times. It is said that there is a plague here that harms one side of the people. People suffer from different degrees of floods, droughts, plagues and diseases every year.
In order to send away the plague god and pray for good weather, abundant crops, prosperous livestock and safe families in the coming year, people focus on the days before and after the Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival every year, such as the sixth, eighth, ninth, thirteenth, third, tenth and fifteenth days of the first month. And conduct a "country trip" respectively. The time varies according to the customs of different villages, and some villages have six years.
Going to the village is very particular. First, the Taoist priest was invited, and then the villagers tied a flower boat with paper, and the Taoist priest cast spells to drive away monsters. When walking in the village, the Taoist priest was singing, holding a gong and putting a flower boat in his hand. The lyrics are: "The beach is full of gongs and drums. When Gong Ming is rung, the ship will sail. The gentleman who studies tells stories, the men and women who plow the fields tell official ceremonies, the businessmen tell about making money, the egghead tells about waterways, and the eighteen martial arts tell about youth ... "Sing until the evil soul is driven away and happiness is brought back to the hall. The moral of this practice is that the Taoist priest caught the god of plague on the flower boat, and all the bad luck flowed out of the sea with the flower boat, leading Fulu home. Recommended: Introduction of traditional French festivals.
In addition to arranging flower boats, every household should burn incense, worship God and make tea. At first, each family only invited grandparents to eat tea, and later it developed into a custom. Every village stipulates the day when men, women and children eat tea fruits, which is what we call "Tea Fruit Festival".
People use local materials and make more use of green crops to make some traditional snacks to celebrate festivals or give them to relatives and friends. The more common snacks are rice flour, glutinous rice balls, puffs (equivalent to pancakes with stuffing), steamed dumplings, zongzi, people's mouths, tea fruits, dumplings, water chestnuts, zongzi, sweet cakes, sweet potatoes mixed with powder, fried piles, water olives and so on. Some traditional foods have been commercialized and become local delicacies.