How did the ancient people live a clear life? Is ancient Tomb-Sweeping Day really a food festival?

Spring is coming to Qingming, and Tomb-Sweeping Day is also the time when many seasonal foods are on the market. Cai Bowen, a folk scholar in Nanjing, said that hiking and picnicking in Tomb-Sweeping Day have a long history. Ancient Tomb-Sweeping Day was a "food festival", not only many seasonal foods were listed in this spring season, but also the customs of Tomb-Sweeping Day and the ancient "Cold Food Festival" gradually overlapped today, and some special foods of the Cold Food Festival were handed down.

Ancient women's "eating Qingming"

Qingming cuisine has existed since ancient times. The ancients created some foods to meet the needs of cold food, which was forbidden by fire and cold food. For example, wheat straw mashed juice and glutinous rice are used to make green rice balls, Chinese tallow juice is dyed with black rice to make cakes, or Chinese toon buds are mixed with gluten, and tender willow leaves are mixed with tofu to make cold food. Tomb-Sweeping Day is an ancient festival of sacrifice. People usually use four dishes and six bowls of sake to pay homage to their ancestors. After the sacrifice, family members and invited relatives * * * enjoy wine and delicacies, which is called "eating Qingming". In ancient Jiangnan, people chose shepherd's purse to make wonton for festivals, and made yellow flowers and green fruit cakes as offerings when sweeping graves in Qingming. It is made from the tender leaves of compositae weeds by mashing to remove juice and powder, which is very delicious. Moreover, the tradition of Qingming cuisine also comes from the picnic after the Qingming outing in ancient times.

Especially in ancient times, women were not allowed to go out at ordinary times. Tomb-Sweeping Day was a good opportunity for ancient women to go out to worship their ancestors and go for an outing. On this day, they will dress up, go out early to pay homage to their ancestors, and then go for an outing, so it is also a festival for women in ancient Tomb-Sweeping Day. They can enjoy the spring scenery, fly kites and have a picnic in the suburbs.

Eating dumplings has been a custom for more than two thousand years.

Cai Bowen said that the "wheat straw" in the south of the Yangtze River was born in Qingming, but it is difficult to find it. It is precisely because of this that green zongzi made of wheat straw is particularly important in the folk customs of Qingming in the south of the Yangtze River. Every time I go to Tomb-Sweeping Day, the people in the south of the Yangtze River will grab a handful of "wheat straw" in the field, pound it into juice at home, mix it with dry glutinous rice flour, wrap it in bean paste, put a small piece of lard in a cage, steam it, and brush a thin layer of cooked vegetable oil on the surface when it comes out of the pot. In addition, wormwood is also a common Qingming food. After the glutinous rice is steamed, it is mixed with Folium Artemisiae Argyi and mashed into rice paste. Some peanuts or sesame seeds are wrapped in the middle, made into small green cakes, and steamed in a pot. This is the wormwood cake.

"The custom of eating Youth League can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty more than two thousand years ago." He said that the traditional foods of the ancient Cold Food Festival included glutinous rice cheese, wheat cheese and almond cheese. Nowadays, some green balls are made of green wormwood, some are made of Bromus inermis juice and glutinous rice flour, and then stuffed with bean paste. Nowadays, the function of green balls as sacrifices is gradually fading, but they are still very popular as food.

The temptation of mussels and snails

During my stay in Tomb-Sweeping Day, there was another delicious food, namely mussel bean curd soup. People in Nanjing call mussels "crooked". Choosing a small, red shell is enough for a family of three, about six. Wash it repeatedly with hot water first, sprinkle some salt and mix well, then wash it later. Knock the hard edge loose with the back of the knife so that the cooked meat won't get old. Finally, the "crooked" is cut into strips with a width of one centimeter, and ginger, onion, bacon or ham, tofu and crooked are put into a pot with fire and boiled into thick soup, which is extremely delicious. Some of them can also put broad bean petals in it, or fresh bamboo shoots, seedlings and grass. The soup is delicious and the meat is fresh. I won't forget it in March. But it's getting cold, so you can't eat more. People with bad stomachs should be especially careful. Another seafood in Nanjing at this time is fried snails. Fried snails is a seafood dish with Nanjing flavor. Made of snails, peppers and various seasonings, it tastes delicious. Fried snails are fried on a large plate, eaten with your own mouth, and some are directly fried with snail meat. For example, fried snails with leeks are the most popular dishes in Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Dig wild vegetables together in the whole city

During the Qingming period, all kinds of fresh and tender wild vegetables became delicacies on the table of Nanjing people. Stir-fried or dried Artemisia selengensis, plus a little sharp pepper, is simply a sharp dish in Nanjing people's hearts. This season is the best time to eat Malantou. "West Wu eats the wind" said: "Swallows fly in February, and bamboo shoots are absolutely tender and mussels are fat. Lycium barbarum and Malan taste good, and the eggs stand on the tofu skin. " The fun of eating wild vegetables in Tomb-Sweeping Day is that you can pick them yourself. Every year, many people in Tomb-Sweeping Day and Nanjing spontaneously form a "folk potherb group" to conduct a big search for potherb in the whole city. During the outing season, they dig wild vegetables with small shovels and baskets to pursue the golden memories of their childhood. In Mochou Lake, Xuanwu Lake, Meihua Mountain, Arctic Pavilion, Jiangning, Baguazhou and other places, citizens go hiking. Moreover, Nanjing has the saying of "eight fresh" in spring, which refers to two kinds of "eight fresh in drought" and "eight fresh in water", including shepherd's purse, Artemisia annua, Malantou, wolfberry head, alfalfa head, purslane, goose intestine and Toona sinensis. Eating wild vegetables in Qingming has become a major feature of Nanjing.