Why do you eat "black rice" on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month?

The eighth day of the fourth lunar month is the traditional Nirvana Festival in China. According to folklore, Mulian, a disciple of Sakyamuni, tried to dye rice with the juice of southern candle leaves, cook it into black rice and send it. Hungry ghosts dare not eat it. Mother is finally full, and people eat black rice every year to commemorate Mulian's dutiful son.

Black rice was originally a folk festival food in China, which existed in the Tang Dynasty. In Jiangsu and Anhui, it has become a custom for many people to cook black rice with the leaves of Vaccinium bracteatum.

Since the Song Dynasty, Buddhists began to use vegetarian rice as vegetarian food. Especially in the bathing festival on April 8, Buddhists often make black rice to worship the Buddha, so it is also called Amimi. In the Yuan Dynasty, it was first seen in poetry that vegetarian rice was eaten at the Cold Food Festival. Lu Cheng's "Three Books on Cold Food" said: "Adding vegetables is not greasy with vegetarian rice, and cooking is not good."

After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, green rice has also become a seasonal food in many southern regions. For example, the five-color rice eaten in Guangdong in the Ming Dynasty was also derived from green rice. In the Qing Dynasty, Li's Notes on South Vietnam contained: "Today, people have to pay for their polished rice every social day." Today, Tomb-Sweeping Day in Shanghai eats green meatballs, which Lang Ying in Ming Dynasty thought was also evolved from green rice.