What do Xiamen people eat on Mid-Autumn Festival? What are the customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival in Xiamen?

Xiamen has its own unique Minnan culture. In the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival, there are local customs such as "listening to incense", "sweet potato taro" and "Mid-Autumn Festival cake". Let's approach the Mid-Autumn Festival of ancient Xiamen people.

Mid-Autumn Festival custom in Xiamen

Tingxiang

In the impression of old Xiamen people, the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month is the Christmas of the lunar star. They continued the ancient people's worship of astronomical phenomena and set this day as Yue Bai Day. People with worries, on the other hand, seek "direction" from the moon when it is high above-this is listening to incense.

Steamed sweet potato taro

In the old Xiamen proverb, there is also the saying "sweet potato and taro on August 15th", which means that during the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th, people will sacrifice the freshly harvested sweet potato and taro to the gods. Sweet potato and taro ripen around Mid-Autumn Festival and are seasonal ingredients. Golden sweet potatoes and white taro are regarded as "gold covered with silver" by Minnan people. Eating them has the effect of "protecting children and grandchildren"

In Minnan dialect, taro is homophonic with "protection". Taro is often the "taro" that grows in the nest. People often say that "taro is a grandson", which is homophonic with the saying of "caring for children and grandchildren". These are the blessings of the Land Bureau, so I paid homage to the Land Bureau on August 15.

Bo cake

Every year around the Mid-Autumn Festival, the cake shops in Xiamen will produce a large number of special Mid-Autumn Festival cakes, including pies and Cantonese cakes, which are beautifully packaged and are good gifts. This is one of the necessary props for Mid-Autumn Festival Bo cake.

Traditional moon cakes are made up of moon cakes of different sizes. A set of moon cakes includes: 1 cake, church 2 cakes, three red cakes 4 cakes, four in one cake 8 cakes, two in one cake 16 cakes, and one show cake 32 cakes.

What is particularly interesting about the custom of Bo cake in Xiamen is that the best food is Sanhong cake, not Zhuangyuan cake.

This comes from an interesting legend: in the 22nd year of Yongle (1442), he was the first scholar named Sun. Ming thought that the combination of Yue and Gong was a bad word and unlucky, so he changed the third place to Xing Kuanyi as the champion. According to Xiamen people, the top scholar is not necessarily a talented person, and the third one is a person with real talent and practical learning. Therefore, the champion cake tastes ordinary, and the three red cakes are always the best.