Wuhan Spring Festival customs:
The Spring Festival is an ancient festival in my country and the most important festival of the year. How to celebrate this festival has evolved over thousands of years of history. , formed some relatively fixed customs and habits, many of which are still passed down to this day.
Sweeping dust
"On the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month, dust and sweep the house." According to "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals", my country had the custom of sweeping dust during the Spring Festival in the era of Yao and Shun. According to folklore: because "dust" and "chen" are homophonic, sweeping dust in the New Year means "removing the old and spreading the new", and its purpose is to sweep away all bad luck and bad luck. This custom entrusts people with their desire to destroy the old and establish the new and their prayers to say goodbye to the old and usher in the new. Every Spring Festival comes, every household has to clean the environment, wash all kinds of utensils, remove and wash bedding and curtains, sweep the Liulv courtyard, dust away dirt and cobwebs, and dredge open ditches and ditches. Everywhere is filled with the joyful atmosphere of doing hygiene and welcoming the new year cleanly.
Spring couplets
Spring couplets are also called door pairs, spring posts, couplets, couplets, peach charms, etc. They describe the background of the times and express good wishes with neat, dual, concise and exquisite words. , is a unique literary form in my country. Every Spring Festival, every household, whether in urban or rural areas, selects a red Spring Festival couplet and pastes it on the door to add a festive atmosphere to the festival. This custom began in the Song Dynasty and became popular in the Ming Dynasty. By the Qing Dynasty, the ideological and artistic quality of Spring Festival couplets had been greatly improved. Liang Zhangju’s Spring Festival Couplets monograph "Three Couples on the Threshold" has a detailed introduction to the origin of the couplets and the characteristics of various works. All discussed.
There are many types of Spring Festival couplets. According to the place of use, they can be divided into door centers, frame pairs, horizontal drapes, spring strips, bucket squares, etc. The "door center" is affixed to the upper center of the door panel; the "frame pair" is affixed to the left and right door frames; the "horizontal stripe" is affixed to the crossbar of the door; the "spring strips" are affixed to the corresponding places according to different contents; "Dojin" is also called "door leaf", which is square and diamond-shaped, and is often posted on furniture and screen walls.
Pasting window grilles and pasting the word "福" upside down
In the folk, people also like to put various paper-cuts - window grilles - on their windows. Window grilles not only enhance the festive atmosphere, but also integrate decoration, appreciation and practicality. Paper-cutting is a very popular folk art in my country and has been loved by people for thousands of years. Because it is mostly pasted on windows, it is also called "window flower". With its unique summary and exaggeration techniques, window grilles vividly express auspicious symbols and good wishes, decorating the festival with prosperity and splendor.
At the same time as pasting Spring Festival couplets, some families have to paste large and small "福" characters on their house doors, walls, and lintels. Posting the word "福" during the Spring Festival is a long-standing folk custom in my country. The word "福" refers to blessing and luck, expressing people's yearning for a happy life and their wishes for a better future. In order to more fully reflect this yearning and wish, some people simply paste the word "福" upside down to express "happiness has arrived" and "blessing has arrived". Folks also use the word "Fu" to make various patterns with detailed drawings, such as longevity star, birthday peach, carp jumping over the dragon gate, good harvest, dragon and phoenix showing auspiciousness, etc.
New Year pictures
Hanging New Year pictures during the Spring Festival is also very common in urban and rural areas. The thick black and colorful New Year pictures add a lot of prosperity and joy to thousands of households. New Year pictures are an ancient folk art in my country, reflecting the people's simple customs and beliefs and reposing their hopes for the future. New Year pictures, like Spring Festival couplets, originated from the "door god". With the rise of woodblock printing, the content of New Year paintings is no longer limited to monotonous themes such as door gods, but has become rich and colorful. In some New Year painting workshops, "Three Stars of Fortune, Luxury and Longevity", "Blessings from Heavenly Officials", "Five Grain" Classic color New Year pictures such as "Prosperous Harvest", "Prosperity of Six Livestocks", "Welcoming Spring and Receiving Good Luck" can satisfy people's good wishes of celebrating the good year. There are three important producing areas of New Year paintings in our country: Taohuawu in Suzhou, Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Weifang in Shandong. They have formed three major schools of Chinese New Year paintings, each with its own characteristics.
The earliest New Year paintings collected in our country today are the woodcut New Year paintings of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Slender and Slender with the Beauty of the Country", which depict four ancient beauties: Wang Zhaojun, Zhao Feiyan, Ban Ji and Luzhu. The most widely circulated among the people is a New Year painting of "Mouse Marriage". It depicts an interesting scene of a mouse marrying a bride according to human customs.
In the early years of the Republic of China, Shanghai Zheng Mantuo combined the calendar with New Year pictures. This is a new form of New Year pictures. This two-in-one New Year picture later developed into a wall calendar, which is now popular all over the country.
Keeping the year old on New Year’s Eve is one of the most important annual customs. The custom of keeping the year old has been around for a long time. The earliest record can be found in the "Fengtu Zhi" of Zhouchu in the Western Jin Dynasty: On New Year's Eve, each person greets each other with gifts, which is called "giving the new year"; "Dividing the year old"; everyone stays up all night waiting for dawn, which is called "keeping the year old".
“One night is two years old, five o’clock is divided into two days.” On New Year’s Eve, the whole family gets together, has New Year’s Eve dinner, lights candles or oil lamps, sits around the fire and chats, waiting to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. At this time, the all-night vigil symbolizes driving away all evil plagues and looking forward to auspiciousness in the new year. This custom gradually became popular. In the early Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem about "keeping the year old": "The cold leaves the winter snow, and the warmth brings the spring breeze." To this day, people are still used to staying up late on New Year's Eve to welcome the new year.
In ancient times, staying up late had two meanings: older people staying up late meant "saying goodbye to the old year", which meant cherishing time; young people staying up late meant to prolong the life of their parents. Since the Han Dynasty, the transition time between the new and the old year has generally been at midnight.
Firecrackers
There is a saying among Chinese folk that "firecrackers open the door". That is to say, when the New Year arrives, the first thing every household does when they open the door is to set off firecrackers to ward off the old and welcome the new with the beeping sound of firecrackers. Firecrackers are a specialty of China, also known as "firecrackers", "firecrackers" and "firecrackers". It originated very early and has a history of more than 2,000 years. Setting off firecrackers can create a festive and lively atmosphere. It is a festive entertainment activity that can bring people joy and good luck. With the passage of time, the application of firecrackers has become more and more widespread, and the varieties and colors have become more and more numerous. During major festivals and happy events, as well as weddings, house construction, openings, etc., firecrackers must be set off to celebrate and for good luck. Now, Liuyang in Hunan, Foshan and Dongyao in Guangdong, Yichun and Pingxiang in Jiangxi, and Wenzhou in Zhejiang are famous hometowns of fireworks in my country. The firecrackers they produce are of various colors and high quality, and are not only sold well across the country, but also exported to the world.
New Year greetings
On the first day of the New Year, people get up early, put on their most beautiful clothes, dress up neatly, and go out to visit relatives and friends, pay New Year greetings to each other, and wish each other New Year’s greetings. Good luck in the coming year. There are many ways to pay New Year's greetings. Some are led by the head of the same clan and several people go from house to house to pay New Year's greetings. Some are colleagues inviting a few people to pay New Year's greetings. There are also people who gather together to congratulate each other, which is called "group worship". Since it was time-consuming and laborious to pay New Year greetings at home, some upper-class figures and scholar-bureaucrats later used various stickers to congratulate each other, and the later "New Year's greeting cards" developed from this.
When paying New Year greetings during the Spring Festival, the younger generation should first pay New Year greetings to the elders, wishing the elders longevity and health. The elders can distribute the New Year's money prepared in advance to the younger generation. It is said that the New Year's money can suppress evil spirits, because "year" and "evil" "Homophonous" means that if the younger generation gets the lucky money, they can spend their first year in peace. There are two types of New Year's money. One is made of colorful ropes threaded into a dragon shape and placed at the foot of the bed. This record is found in "Yanjing Years' Notes"; the other is the most common, which is given by parents wrapped in red paper. Children's money. New Year's money can be given to the younger generation in public after paying New Year's greetings, or parents can secretly put it under the child's pillow when the child is asleep on New Year's Eve. Nowadays, the custom of elders giving lucky money to younger generations is still popular.
Food customs during the Spring Festival
In ancient agricultural societies, from about the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, housewives would be busy preparing food for the New Year. Because pickling cured meat takes a long time, it must be prepared as early as possible. Many provinces in my country have the custom of pickling cured meat, among which Guangdong Province’s cured meat is the most famous.
Steamed rice cake. Rice cake has become a must-have seasonal food for almost every household because of its homophonic pronunciation of "year high" and its varied tastes. The styles of rice cakes include square yellow and white rice cakes, which symbolize gold and silver and convey the meaning of getting rich in the new year.
The taste of rice cakes varies from place to place. Beijingers like to eat red date rice cakes, mince rice cakes and white rice cakes made from glutinous rice or yellow rice. People in Hebei like to add jujube, red beans, mung beans, etc. to rice cakes and steam them together.
In northern Shanxi and Inner Mongolia and other places, it is customary to eat fried rice cakes made with yellow rice flour during the Chinese New Year. Some are also filled with bean paste, date paste and other fillings. Shandong people steam rice cakes with yellow rice and red dates. Northern rice cakes are mainly sweet and can be steamed or fried. Some people even eat them dipped in sugar. The rice cakes in the south are both sweet and salty. For example, the rice cakes in Suzhou and Ningbo are made from japonica rice and have a light taste. In addition to steaming and frying, it can also be sliced ??and fried or cooked in soup. The sweet rice cake is made of glutinous rice flour with ingredients such as sugar, lard, rose, osmanthus, mint, and sujiang. It is carefully made and can be steamed directly or dipped in egg white and fried.
The night before the actual Chinese New Year is called Reunion Eve. People who have traveled far away from home have to rush home thousands of miles away. The whole family will sit together to make dumplings for the New Year. The dumplings are made by mixing the dough first. Make dumpling skins, and then use the skins to wrap the fillings. The content of the fillings is varied, including various meats, eggs, seafood, seasonal vegetables, etc. Eat it with soy sauce of vinegar, minced garlic and sesame oil as condiments. There are also ways to eat fried dumplings and baked dumplings (pot stickers). Because the word "和" in noodles means "合"; the characters "dumpling" and "Jiao" in dumplings are homophones, and "合" and "Jiao" also mean getting together, so dumplings are used to symbolize reunion and joy; and they are also used to symbolize reunion. The meaning of Jiaozi is very auspicious; in addition, because dumplings resemble ingots in shape, eating dumplings during the Chinese New Year also has the auspicious meaning of "bringing in wealth and treasure". The whole family gathers together to make dumplings, talk about the New Year, and have fun.