The History and Culture of Laba Porridge

Laba porridge, also known as "seven treasures and five flavors porridge", "Buddha porridge" and "everyone's meal", is a kind of porridge made of various ingredients. "Drinking Laba porridge" is the custom of Laba Festival. The traditional ingredients of Laba porridge are rice, millet, corn, coix seed, red dates, lotus seeds, peanuts, longan and various beans (such as red beans, mung beans, soybeans, black beans and kidney beans).

The custom of drinking Laba porridge on Laba Festival comes from Buddhism. The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is the day when Buddha Sakyamuni became a Buddha. In order not to forget the suffering of the Buddha before he became a Buddha, but also to commemorate the enlightenment of the Buddha on the eighth day of December, ancient Indians ate mixed porridge as a souvenir. Since Buddhism was introduced to China, temples have cooked porridge with fragrant valleys and fruits and distributed it to believers and loyal men and women. In the Song Dynasty, the folk gradually formed the custom of cooking and drinking porridge on Laba Festival, which has continued to this day. [ 1][2]

Wu's Dream in the Southern Song Dynasty says: "On the eighth day of this month, the temple name is Laba. Dasha and other temples have five-flavored porridge called Laba porridge. " In the Qing Dynasty, the custom in Volume 11 of Fang County Records said: "Laba porridge is made of rice, wheat beans and various fruits and vegetables, which is called Laba porridge. If the fruit tree had any lies, he put the porridge in the hole with an axe and asked,' If it doesn't knot, the branches will break.' Call it "feeding trees"