A Comparison between Traditional Spring Festival Customs and Modern Spring Festival Customs in China

Generally speaking, Chinese people eat rice cakes, jiaozi, Ciba, glutinous rice balls, poached eggs, big meat, whole fish, wine, oranges, apples, peanuts, melon seeds, sweets, fragrant tea and dishes. Accompanied by dusting, washing bedding, preparing new year's goods, pasting Spring Festival couplets, pasting New Year pictures, pasting paper-cuts, pasting blessings, lighting candles, lighting fires, setting off firecrackers, keeping old, giving lucky money, paying New Year greetings, visiting relatives and friends,

Many activities, such as visiting ancestral graves, visiting flower markets and raising social fires, are extremely enjoyable. For example, the New Year's Eve is particularly important: first, the whole family should get together, and those who have not returned for some reason should leave a seat and a set of tableware to show their reunion; Second, the food is rich, pay attention to "oral color", call the rice cake "step by step", jiaozi "Wanshun", wine "running water", eggs "big gold ingot" and goldfish "more than a year"; This kind of fish is not allowed to eat. It is called "Kanyu" and must be eaten until the first day of school. In areas where there are no fish in the north, carved wooden fish are mostly used instead; Third, the seats are orderly, mostly for ancestors. Grandchildren are in the middle, and their parents are in a lower position. Men, women and children should drink. Close the door when eating, and the excitement will be gone.

The home-cooked dishes of New Year's Eve have their own characteristics in different places. In the past, in Beijing and Tianjin, people usually cooked rice, stewed pork, beef and mutton, stewed chicken and cooked several dishes. Shaanxi family banquets are generally four or eight bowls. Four bowls are stir-fried dishes and cold dishes, and eight bowls are mainly stewed dishes and cooked food. Only meat dishes in southern Anhui include braised pork, tiger skin, meatballs, moo Shu pork, steamed pork, braised pork, pork liver, pork heart and pork belly products, as well as all kinds of fried pork slices and shredded pork. Eastern Hubei is "three steamed", "three cakes" and "three pills". "Three steaming" means steaming whole fish, whole duck and whole chicken; The "three cakes" are fish cakes, meat pies and sheep cakes;

"Three pills" are fish pills, meatballs and lotus root pills. Generally, people in Harbin fry eight dishes, 10 or 12 or 16. The main ingredients are nothing more than chicken, duck, fish and vegetables. The New Year's Eve dinner in Gannan is usually 12 dish. Some places in Zhejiang are generally the "top ten bowls", seeking the color of "complete happiness", mainly chicken, duck, fish and various vegetables. Nanchang, Jiangxi generally has more than a dozen dishes, paying attention to four cold dishes, four hot dishes, eight big dishes and two soups.

All over the country, there are one or several indispensable dishes on New Year's Eve, and these dishes often have some auspicious meanings. For example, in Suzhou, there must be vegetables (then happy dishes), bean sprouts (Italian food) and celery (hard-working) on the table. There must be a carp weighing about 1 kg in central and southern Hunan, called "Tuannian Fish", and a pig elbow weighing about 3 kg, called "Tuannian Elbow". There are two fish on the dining table in central and southern Anhui. One is the whole carp, which can only be seen but not eaten. It shows respect for ancestors, and it also means more than one year. The other is silver carp, which is edible and symbolizes the prosperity of children and grandchildren. The first bowl of Lai in Qimen family banquet is "Zhonghe", which is made of tofu, mushrooms, winter bamboo shoots, shrimp skin and fresh meat, meaning "harmony is precious".

There is a bowl of "chicken catches beans" on the dining table in Hefei, which means "grab money and get rich". The housekeeper wants to eat a chicken leg, which is called "grasping the money claw", which means making a fortune in the coming year. Anqing's head should eat a bowl of noodles before meals, which is called "money standard" Nanchang area must eat rice cakes, braised fish, fried rice noodles, eight-treasure rice and boiled thick soup, which in turn means annual rise, fish every year, abundant crops, string rice, eight-treasure rice and prosperity every year.

Northern areas like to eat jiaozi during the Spring Festival, which means unity, good luck and welcoming the New Year. In order to increase the atmosphere and fun of the festival, people in the past dynasties have made great efforts to package jiaozi. People keep their wallets in jiaozi. Whoever eats them will make a fortune next year. Wrap honey in jiaozi, and whoever eats it will represent the sweetness of life in the coming year and so on.

Traditionally, many new year's goods are prepared at home. Now there are supermarkets in the city, and the general new year's goods are prepared directly in the supermarket.