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, in order to get food, Mulian, a disciple of Sakyamuni, tried to dye rice with the juice of southern candle leaves and cook it into black rice to send. Hungry ghosts dare not eat it. Mother is finally full, and the people eat black rice every year to commemorate Manglietia's dutiful son.

Black rice was originally a folk festival food in China, which had 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 regard vegetarian meal as a vegetarian food. Especially on the Buddha washing festival on April 8, Buddhists often make black rice to offer to the Buddha, which is also called Amimi for this reason. In the Yuan Dynasty, vegetarian meals were first seen in poetry at the Cold Food Festival. Lu Cheng's "Three Books on Cold Food" said: "Adding vegetables is not greasy with vegetarian rice, and there is no white sheep if it is not cooked well."

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. Li's Notes on South Vietnam in the Qing Dynasty said: "Today's people pay polished rice every time they take a club day." Today, Tomb-Sweeping Day in Shanghai eats green meatballs, which Lang Ying thinks evolved from green rice in the Ming Dynasty.