What is the Tea and Fruit Festival in Baitu Town, Gaoyao City?

The "Tea Fruit Festival", also known as the "Village Festival", which was included in the first batch of representative works of municipal intangible cultural heritage in Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province, is a traditional festival in most villages in the southwest of Gaoyao, Guangdong Province. Every year on the first month of the lunar calendar, or on the fifth, eighth and tenth day of February, villagers make tea fruits and get together with relatives and friends, beaming. Every family wants guests to "eat and drink for free", because the more guests come, the more face the host family has.

Gaoyao's "Tea and Fruit Festival" originated in the late Tang Dynasty and has a history of 1000 years. According to legend, many Central Plains people migrated to the Songlong River Basin in the southwest of Gaoyao in order to avoid the war. As floods, droughts, plagues and other disasters occur in residential areas every year, villagers steam rice noodles to make a snack called "tea fruit" on the fifth day, eighth day, tenth day, twelfth day, third day or February of the first month of each year, offering sacrifices to gods and praying for them to drive away evil spirits, so as to protect villagers' health and prosperity. For a long time, "Tea and Fruit Festival" became a custom.