Winter Solstice is a festival with rich content, and it is also a day that is more valued by the people among the solar terms. After thousands of years of development, the Winter Solstice has formed a unique seasonal food culture. Today in the Jiangnan area, there is still a saying that eating the winter solstice dinner will make you one year older, commonly known as "adding years". What to eat during the winter solstice? What are the food customs during the Winter Solstice? In fact, there are various customs across the country, and the foods eaten during the Winter Solstice are also different. Let’s follow the editor to see how people across the country eat during the Winter Solstice, right?
What do northerners eat during the Winter Solstice?
In the past, there was a saying in old Beijing: "Winter Solstice Wonton and Summer Solstice Noodles". Foods such as dumplings and wontons that symbolize reunion are the first choice on the Winter Solstice table. So where did the chaos of eating dumplings during the Winter Solstice come from? According to legend, during the Han Dynasty, the Huns from the north often harassed the frontiers and the people had no peace. At that time, there were two leaders in the Xiongnu tribe, the Hun clan and the Tun clan, who were very ferocious. The people hated it so much that they used meat stuffing to wrap it into wontons and called them "wontons" after taking the sounds of "hun" and "tun". He eats his hatred and hopes to quell the war and live a peaceful life. Because wontons were first made on the winter solstice, every household eats wontons on the winter solstice.
What do southerners eat during the Winter Solstice
There is a folk saying that "eating glutinous rice balls makes you one year older". Eating glutinous rice balls during the winter solstice is especially popular in Jiangnan. Glutinous rice balls are also called "glutinous rice balls", and eating glutinous rice balls during the Winter Solstice is also called "winter solstice dumplings". "Winter Solstice Group" can be used to worship ancestors, and can also be used to exchange gifts with relatives and friends. In the old days, Shanghainese were most particular about eating glutinous rice balls. They tasted newly brewed sweet liquor, flower cakes and glutinous rice balls at the family feast, and then used meat pieces on the plate to worship their ancestors. In some places in the south, there is a custom of the whole family gathering together to eat red beans and glutinous rice on the night of the winter solstice. According to legend, there was an untalented man of the Gong clan of the Han Dynasty who committed many evil deeds and died on the winter solstice. After his death, he turned into a plague ghost and continued to harm the people. However, this plague ghost is most afraid of red beans, so people cook and eat red bean rice on the winter solstice to ward off plague ghosts and prevent disasters and diseases.
Dumplings and glutinous rice balls are the protagonists on the Winter Solstice tables in the north and south, but in addition to these two protagonists, the Winter Solstice food customs in some places are also very interesting!
What do people in Ningxia eat during the Winter Solstice?
There is a custom in Yinchuan of eating "brain" on the Winter Solstice. On the day of the Winter Solstice, people drink rice noodle soup and eat dumplings made of mutton rice noodle soup. On the day of the winter solstice, the people of Yinchuan gave mutton noodle soup a strange name - "brain". On the fifth day of the night, the housekeeper got busy early. He washed the purple mushrooms on Songshan Mountain and made soup. After boiling, he took out the mushrooms. He put the diced mutton into the pot and stir-fried it. After drying it with water vapor, he added ginger, onion, garlic and chili powder. Stir-fry, add the chopped mushrooms to the diced meat and stir-fry again, then marinate with vinegar (to remove the poisonous smell of wild mushrooms), then add mixed noodles, refined salt, and soy sauce; after the meat is tender, add fungus and golden needles (yellow flowers). Vegetables) stir-fry briefly, add the clear mushroom soup, bring the soup to a boil, add the chopped vermicelli and soaked vermicelli, then add chives, garlic sprouts, and coriander, and you have a pot of mutton powder soup. This pot of soup is red with peppers, yellow with day lily, green with garlic sprouts and coriander, white with vermicelli and vermicelli, and black with mushrooms and fungus. It has five colors: red, yellow, green, white and black. The aroma is fragrant and makes people salivate. During the winter solstice, the common people call it the Ghost Festival. After the dumplings are made, they serve a bowl first and offer another bowl to their neighbors. If I couldn’t eat dumplings in the morning, I would buy Diaolu tri-tip pancakes and fennel pancakes and eat them soaked in powder soup. Dumplings stuffed with mutton powder soup and yellow radish are a common meal for Yinchuan people, but outsiders rave about it. It is rare to see such spicy and delicious dumplings in other places. This can be regarded as a special snack in Yinchuan.
What do Chongqing people eat during the Winter Solstice
Chongqing people have the custom of eating dog meat during the Winter Solstice. The custom of eating dog meat during the Winter Solstice is said to have started in the Han Dynasty. According to legend, Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, ate dog meat cooked by Fan Kuai on the winter solstice. He thought it tasted particularly delicious and praised it profusely. Since then, the folk custom of eating dog meat during the winter solstice has been formed. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that mutton and dog meat have the effect of aphrodisiac and complement. Nowadays, people eat dog meat and mutton on the day of the winter solstice, which is not only nourishing food, but also a good omen for the coming year.
What do Suzhou people eat during the Winter Solstice
Eat wontons to remember Xi Shi.
Since Suzhou was the capital of Wu State 2,500 years ago, the founders of Wu State, Tai Bo and Zhong Yong, were descendants of King Tai of Zhou Dynasty. They inherited the Zhou Dynasty calendar and regarded the winter solstice as the beginning of the year. Therefore, the ancient city of Suzhou still has the "Winter Solstice Day" The "menu" on the winter solstice night every year is even more exquisite, continuing the far-reaching Wudi customs and forming a unique meaning that is different from other cities. In the supermarkets in the streets and alleys of the ancient city of Suzhou, winter wine is piled up like a "hill". Winter wine is brewed only once a year. It is fragrant with osmanthus, sweet and refreshing. There is a saying in Suzhou since ancient times that if you don’t drink winter wine during the winter solstice, it will freeze overnight. When the "Old Suzhou" people returned home, the "Yuan Ye Dinner" placed on the table was not only sumptuous but also "meaningful". Whether it was cold pot, hot stir-fry or fish, meat and poultry, they all changed their names and became "auspicious dishes" and "Yuanbao". "(egg dumplings), "Tuanyuan" (meat balls), "chicken" (plopp), "golden chain" (vermicelli), "ruyicai" (soybean sprouts), "eating more than enough" (fish), etc. Similar, the joy and meaning of Suzhou’s traditional festivals are permeated everywhere.
What do Hangzhou people do during the Winter Solstice
Eating rice cakes. From the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China until now, Hangzhou people like to eat rice cakes during the winter solstice. During the winter solstice, we make three meals of rice cakes with different flavors. In the morning, we eat rice cakes with sesame powder mixed with white sugar. At noon, we eat fried rice cakes with fried vegetables, winter bamboo shoots, and shredded pork. For dinner, we eat rice cakes in soup with mustard mustard, shredded pork, and shredded bamboo shoots. Eating rice cakes during the winter solstice will make you grow taller every year, which is auspicious. There are many places in the north where it is customary to eat dog meat and mutton on the day of the Winter Solstice, because the weather enters the coldest period after the Winter Solstice. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that mutton and dog meat have the effect of aphrodisiac and tonic, and there is still a folk custom of having tonic during the Winter Solstice.
What do Taiwanese eat during the Winter Solstice
In Taiwan, our country, we still preserve the tradition of using nine-layer cakes to worship ancestors during the Winter Solstice. We use glutinous rice flour to knead chickens, ducks, turtles, pigs, cows, etc. Sheep and other animals that symbolize good fortune, wealth and longevity are then steamed in layers in a steamer to worship ancestors to show that they do not forget their ancestors. People with the same surname and the same clan gather in the ancestral temple in order of age and worship their ancestors one by one at the winter solstice or an early date agreed before or after. This is commonly known as "ancestral worship". After the ceremony, a grand banquet will be held to entertain the clan members who come to worship their ancestors. Everyone drinks happily and connects with each other after long separation, which is called "eating ancestors." The ancestors of the Winter Solstice Festival have been passed down from generation to generation in Taiwan to show that they do not forget their "roots".
What do Chaoshan people eat during the Winter Solstice
Eating sweet pills: This custom is almost universal in the entire Chaoshan area, but this custom also contains an interesting vulgar custom: people sacrifice sweet pills on this day After worshiping the ancestors, take out some and stick them on the top of the door, roof beams, rice vats, etc. of your home. Why do we do this? According to legend, there are two reasons: First, the sweet pill is sweet and round, which means good luck. It indicates that there will be a good harvest next year and the family can be reunited. If family members accidentally encounter it on this day, it is a good sign, just like the "Water Splashing Festival" of ethnic minorities. If outsiders happen to visit on this day and let outsiders encounter it, these outsiders will also have good luck. Therefore, people do not want outsiders to visit their homes on this day. One is for rats to eat. According to legend, the seeds of grains were brought to farmers from far away by rats. In order to repay the rats for their contribution, the farmers agreed that during the annual harvest, a small portion should be left unharvested so that rats could eat it. Later, because a greedy man harvested all the grains in the field, the mouse complained to the Goddess of Mercy in anger. After hearing this, the Goddess of Mercy felt pity for the mouse, so she gave it a pair of hard teeth and told it to move into other people's homes in the future. They lived in the house in order to find food. Since then, rats have caused harm everywhere. It has become one of the "four evils" today. However, this bad custom of "sticking sweet pills everywhere" has not been around for a long time. It is not only unhygienic, but also detrimental to appearance and very wasteful, so it will naturally die out. And this custom of "eating sweet nine" has been passed down to this day.
In addition, pumpkin cakes, radishes, red bean glutinous rice, nine-layer cakes, rolled balls, etc. are also delicacies on the Winter Solstice tables for people from all over the world.
Information comes from China Eats.com