The customs and habits of Shantou

1. Eat seven kinds of soups on the seventh day of the first lunar month: seven kinds of soups, also known as seven kinds of dishes, seven treasures soup or seven kinds of porridge, are the traditional eating customs unique to the Spring Festival in Chaoshan and Minnan areas. Seven kinds of soups refer to vegetables such as mustard, Euryale ferox, celery, garlic, spring vegetables, leeks and kale cooked together, which means that new (celery) spring hair (garlic) is rich (cabbage), and long-term (leeks) is suitable for everyone (kale).

2. Eat Winter Festival Pills until the sun in winter: Chaoshan Winter Festival is a traditional festival in Chaoshan, Guangdong. In Chaoshan, Winter Festival is one of the main festivals in a year. There are many folk cultural activities in Chaoshan Winter Festival, such as offering sacrifices to ancestors, thanking gods, sweeping graves and eating glutinous rice pills.

3. Please ask the green mother to do four sentences and other wedding customs: Chaoshan men and women marry into the old customs and hold various ceremonies. The woman's family will hire an old woman who is like a guest in the play to preside over various ceremonies. The old woman is called "Green Mother". The language that Qingniang's mother sings in various ceremonies is called "Four Sentences", which is also called Qingniang Song. ?

4. Fertility customs such as eating ding wine and going out to the garden: In the past, Chaozhou's custom of preferring sons to daughters was only added when boys were born. And we must hold a very lively "lighting" activity. Anyone who gives birth to a boy, on the 13th day of the first lunar month, can stir up a pair of big red lights and hang them on the lampstand of the ancestral temple, symbolizing the family's happiness.

On the Lantern Festival, every night, I take my children to the ancestral temple to receive congratulations from the countryside. In addition to hanging lanterns in front of the ancestral hall, eight screens of lanterns should be hung, or a stage should be set up to make a paper shadow play for the people in the village to watch and entertain.

5. Entertainment folk customs, such as moving a play, painting a play, and competing for lanterns: Before and after the Lantern Festival, all kinds of lanterns are displayed to compete for beauty, which is called "competing for lanterns".

6. Good gifts are given in pairs, and bad gifts are given in odd numbers. In life, people usually give gifts in pairs for beautiful or happy events, and many things packed in boxes are also in pairs, which implies the meaning of yes-men.

7. Belief in Mazu: It is said that Maureen, a folk girl in Meizhou, Fujian, saved the fishermen in the storm after her death. The maritime industry respected her and called her "Mazu Goddess", while the industry named Lin called her "girl" to worship the goddess and build a temple to worship the princess. Therefore, boatmen worship Mazu on the boat on the first and fifteenth day of the first lunar month, and March 23rd every year is called "Mazu's Birth Day". ?

8. staple food: also known as mother food, the agricultural ancestor worshipped by Chaoshan people. Legend has it that the God of Grains is Shennong, who teaches people to eat grains and tastes herbs to cure diseases. Every June 15 and 10/5, after harvesting early and late rice, farmers fill rice tubes with white rice and paste a circle of red paper, which is regarded as a sacred place for grain sacrifice. Commonly known as the birthday of the God of Grains.

Extended data:

1 .7 soup is a unique dietary custom of people in Chaoshan area. "Seven kinds of soups", that is, seven different vegetables are cooked into a pot to eat, has a long history. Legend has it that during the Song Dynasty, a Beijing official was framed by a traitor and exiled to the south of the Yangtze River. On the seventh day of the first month, he came to a remote wilderness near Rongjiang, feeling dizzy and hungry.

I had to pick a few wild vegetables on the spot and cook them into mixed vegetable soup to satisfy my hunger. Just finished eating, I felt my eyes shine and I was full of energy. Later, the official was reinstated and promoted. I remembered that there were seven kinds of life-saving wild vegetables that I tasted in Jiangnan that year, so I asked my family to cook seven kinds of wild vegetables into "seven kinds of soup" on the seventh day of the first month of each year.

2. Chaoshan Winter Festival Pills are divided into two types: one is ordinary glutinous rice pills, and the other is sharp rice pills made of japonica rice. It is made by adding water to japonica rice flour, kneading it into strips and cutting it obliquely with scissors. The two tips are as sharp as white rice, which are mainly popular in Jieyang area.

References:

Baidu encyclopedia-Shantou

Sina. Com: Shantou customs

Baidu encyclopedia-seven kinds of soup

Baidu Encyclopedia-Dingjiu