What Customary Foods to Eat at Qingming

Customary foods eaten at Qingming include Qingming porridge, green dumplings, spring cakes, squash and deep-fried noodles.

1, Qingming Porridge

Chingming Porridge is one of the most common Qingming Festival foods in southern China, which is made of glutinous rice, red beans and lotus seeds. This porridge has a clear soup color, sweet and delicious taste, and is considered to be an essential food for remembering ancestors and worshipping them.

2, green dumplings

Green dumplings are one of the traditional foods of the Qingming Festival in northern China, which are made of glutinous rice flour and bean paste, similar to the soup dumplings in the south. The green color of the outer skin and the freshness of the inner filling symbolize the vitality and hope of spring.

3, spring cake

Spring cake is a kind of pancake, and pancakes are somewhat similar. Spring cake is more popular in the northern region, the production method is to mix the flour into a paste, poured in a pan, spread into a pancake-like, and then put on the top of the green onions, bean paste, sesame seeds and other ingredients, fried into a crispy cake. The spring pancake has a beautiful meaning of "spring breeze", and also signifies the coming of the new year, people welcome the new life and hope.

4, squash

In the southern region, squash is also one of the essential food during the Qingming Festival. Squash is a kind of salted vegetable, made by pickling green vegetables with salt, with a sour and spicy taste, and is a kind of food eaten in conjunction with the Qingming Festival rituals.

Traditionally, people would put squash on offerings during the Qingming Festival to honor and commemorate their ancestors. In modern times, people use squash more often as a snack or condiment, but it is still one of the specialty foods during the Qingming Festival.

5. Deep-fried noodle cakes

It is a traditional custom to eat deep-fried noodle cakes on Qingming Festival. Deep-fried noodle cake is a kind of deep-fried noodle food, which is made of rice flour rolled into thin strips and deep-fried. They are in different shapes, either twisted or gridded, with bright yellow color and crispy taste, and the more they are chewed, the more fragrant they are.

The deep-fried noodle cake started to be eaten during the Cold Food Festival, when many places would prepare the noodle cake so that they could have something to eat when the fire was forbidden. The cost of the noodle cake is relatively low and it is easy to be preserved, and the taste of the noodle cake is crunchy, which is very popular among the people, and so the cake cake has been passed down to the present time.