A Brief Introduction to the Origin of jiaozi

"On the first day of the first month, a packet of jiaozi is served, and on the second day, a packet of jiaozi is served" —— According to the traditional custom in northern China, every household begins to pack jiaozi after the New Year's Eve dinner. When the midnight bell rings, at the beginning of the new year, the whole family will sit around, eat jiaozi and set off firecrackers to welcome the new year. Jiaozi, as an "ancient food", shows its important position in China's food culture.

Jiaozi's custom of eating jiaozi is to knead the dough into round strips, cut it into small noodles, roll it into thin round dough, put stuffing made of minced meat, vegetables and spices on the dough, wrap it into a certain shape, and then put it in a pot to cook it with boiling water. People often eat it with soy sauce, vinegar and garlic paste, which is delicious. Jiaozi, wrapped in New Year's Eve dinner and eaten on New Year's Eve, is called "Old jiaozi", which embodies people's yearning for a better life.

The shape of jiaozi is not fixed: the most common is the crescent-shaped jiaozi, which looks like an ingot and is used to "congratulate the New Year and wish you a fortune"; Jiaozi in the shape of persimmon or cotton peach means that people pray for "all the best" with the help of the sounds and shapes of these two foods respectively. As for the shape of corn, ears of wheat, sheep and chicken, it means "five grains are abundant" and "six livestock are prosperous" If there is little stuffing in the end and the noodles are redundant, roll the noodles into thick skin with a little meat stuffing inside and knead them into a wheel, which symbolizes "rolling forward year after year and going smoothly year after year".

Interestingly, when wrapping jiaozi, people usually quietly wrap one or two washed coins in it. People who eat will shout in surprise: "money!" " I am eating money! "Winning this lottery ticket means that in the new year, the owner will have good luck and prosperity.

Some people also put peanuts (also called longevity fruit), red dates and sweets in jiaozi, wishing the elderly a long and healthy life, and hoping that the new year will be as prosperous and sweet as red dates and sweets.

It used to be popular to eat "broken jiaozi" on the fifth day of the first month. They were poor peasants in the old society, hoping to plug all the holes in the previous year and avoid another famine and deficit. Of course, people nowadays have forgotten this custom.

Jiaozi also plays an important role in folk wedding celebrations. Jiaozi, a farmer in northern Shaanxi, is a "flat food". After the bride entered the bridal chamber, she worshipped her in-laws and relatives, and her mother-in-law happily brought a bowl of "children's food". When the bride ate, her mother-in-law asked punfully, "Are you alive?" At this time, the shy bride will answer: "Health!" Therefore, the mother-in-law smiled and hoped that her daughter-in-law would give her a fat doll.

On the third day of the wedding, the groom accompanied the bride back to her mother's house, commonly known as "returning to the door". At home, the eldest sister-in-law gave a bowl of "Huimen jiaozi" to her brother-in-law. Hebei Huimen Jiaozi, a farmer, is called "Qi Jiaozi". Squeeze this kind of jiaozi, and you can fill it with only one breath without meat. After cooking, hot air makes jiaozi swell and round. If the eater doesn't know the secret and takes a bite, it is inevitable that there will be hot air burning his mouth. This custom is called "beating brother-in-law", which aims to test brother-in-law's intelligence and simplicity and enhance each other's affection in play. On the twelfth day after her daughter gave birth, her mother's family will bring jiaozi to visit. This trick is called "pinching the bone seam", which means that after the daughter gives birth, she opens the pelvis and "pinches" the pelvis back to restore her body shape by borrowing the meaning of intercourse.

As the saying goes, "You can't taste as good as jiaozi", so people often use jiaozi to "celebrate the harvest". When farmers accept new wheat, they usually eat jiaozi to celebrate. In the past, the mountain people in Changbai Mountain, Jilin Province "released mountains" and dug up valuable ginseng. After returning to the shack, they "shook their heads" and said, "Have a sweet meal today!" Therefore, the Caiyan people wrap too many cooks in the jiaozi.

Changes in jiaozi jiaozi has experienced a long process of development. The earliest record about jiaozi is Zhengzitong written by Zhang Zilie in Ming Dynasty: "Bait is popular in jiaozi today, and bread crumbs are pleasant, so wet and dry are different."

Before the Ming Dynasty, jiaozi was called "Fenjiao", "Joule" and "jiaozi".

For example, in the book "Dream of Tokyo" written by Meng in the Northern Song Dynasty, when describing the birthday banquet in the palace, he said: "Every royal banquet has wine and meat, salted black beans, fried meat, double humps and horns, until three lights."

Up to now, people in Guangzhou have called the fried jiaozi (usually stuffed with chopped flowers and sugar) "oil angle Zi", which may be the old name of the Song Dynasty.

The stuffing of dumplings in Song Dynasty is very particular. There are precious hump stuffing in the royal banquet of the court, and fresh crab stuffing in the countryside. Lu You, a great poet in the Song Dynasty, described jiaozi, a kind of stuffed crab he had eaten, as follows: "The crab is a prison ball, and the fish is cooked for fragrance". "Prison Ball" was another name for jiaozi in ancient times.

In the "stuffing roast" part of Shi Ming's diet, Liu Xi of Han Dynasty recorded the making process: mixing meat with various seasonings to make meatballs, and roasting them on them. Later, people used dough blocks as skins and wrapped meatballs in them to make them not fragile.

This is probably the reason for the name "prison pill". Come on. Let's go

Turpan, Xinjiang used to be the only place where the ancient "Silk Road" passed. 1959, archaeologists unearthed a bowl of crescent-shaped jiaozi in the Tang Dynasty tomb in Astana, a suburb of Turpan, whose shape is exactly the same as that of jiaozi today. 1986, jiaozi was unearthed again in the Tang tomb in Sanbao Township, Turpan. This shows that more than 0/000 years ago, jiaozi entered the homes of ordinary people and spread to the western regions through the Silk Road.

In the Tang Dynasty, jiaozi used "cage steaming" and "water boiling" to cook. The "caged prison pill" recorded in Duan's Youyang Zayi is obviously "steamed dumplings". And the "prison pill in the cage", that is, "prison pill in the soup", should be jiaozi. Steamed dumplings are drier than jiaozi. They taste hard and chewy. The jiaozi unearthed in Turpan is probably a "prison pill on a cage".

In fact, in the Jin Dynasty before the Tang Dynasty, prison pills were already quite elegant. Shu Zhe, a scholar in A Jin Dynasty, gave a vivid and detailed description of the production process of prison pills: the flour for making prison pills should be re-screened to be as white as dust and snow, and lamb chops and ribs should be used as stuffing, which are fat and thin and delicious; Sprinkle seasoning into the meat stuffing, add salt and lobster sauce and mix well; After making pills, put them in a steamer, put them on the pot immediately after the water in the pot boils, and steam them over high fire; When the pot is boiled and served, the skin is thin and tender, and the white pills are full of fragrance.

From "prison pill" in Jin and Tang Dynasties, "Jiao Er" in Song and Yuan Dynasties to "Jiao Zi" in Ming Dynasty, it is the changing history of "Jiao Zi" that we appreciate today. Each era has its own unique name, and each era is different from the previous dynasty, but our favorite jiaozi has been perfectly preserved and has become one of people's favorite foods today, especially during the Spring Festival.