Hakka customs and habits

Hakka Spring Festival custom Spring Festival, commonly known as Chinese New Year, is the biggest and most grand festival in a year. In December of the lunar calendar, men try their best to find more money to buy new year's goods, and women cut more firewood and grass to prepare for the New Year. 1February 25th is "Entering the Year", commonly known as "Ghost Lock the Gate". Instead of cutting firewood and grass in the mountains, women clean up at home to welcome the New Year. In the 65438+ February of the lunar calendar, every household began to prepare "new year's goods" to catch up with "new year's goods". The indispensable new year's goods are as follows: Sichuan sugar. A sucrose produced in Longchuan, Heyuan and Zijin. It is characterized by strong stickiness and is suitable for making rice cakes. Almost every household has to buy several hundred kilograms. New clothes. Everyone should at least make a new suit, a new pair of shoes and buy a new pair of socks. Nianmi. Generally speaking, every household should have at least one month's rations, and no noise is allowed before the first month. In the past, there was no processing machinery such as rice mill, and it was all processed by hand, which was very heavy, and most of them had to work hard for three or four days to complete. Fried rice cakes. It is cooked and dried glutinous rice, then mixed with sand and fried in an iron pan, or fried with vegetables, which is called fried rice. Then stir-fry Sichuan sugar into slurry, put the ingredients such as fried rice, peanut kernel and sesame into syrup, stir well, pick it up, put it into a wooden frame made of plates, flatten and compact it, and cut it into rectangular pieces with a knife. Stir-fried rice cakes are sweet and crisp, and both adults and children like them. Fried rice cakes are very technical, not only the ingredients should be in proportion, but also the "heat" should be paid attention to when frying pulp. If it is not good, it will not become a piece, but will become a plate of scattered rice. Generally speaking, a barrel of rice should be exchanged for 2.5 Jin of Sichuan sugar, which can only be more, not less. Pay special attention to the "temperature". An experienced person puts a bowl of clear water on the stove, and Sichuan sugar will start to condense after a certain period of time. Drop a little syrup into the clear water with bamboo chopsticks. If it has become a "pine nut point", immediately put out the flame at the bottom of the pot and put the fried rice into the pot and stir it constantly. Try it with your hands. If it's sticky, you can pour the fried rice into a wooden frame and flatten it until it solidifies, and then cut it into small pieces with a knife. Oil fruit. Also known as "fried dumpling". The production of avocado is relatively simple. First, grind the glutinous rice into powder, and mix 2.5 kg of Sichuan sugar into each bucket of glutinous rice. Boil the sugar into a sugar solution and rub it evenly with glutinous rice flour. The longer it is rubbed, the softer it becomes. After kneading into powder balls, knead into powder balls the size of table tennis balls. Stick white sesame seeds on the surface, and then fry in the oil pan until it is dark red. Steamed and fried avocado is used as wine during the Chinese New Year and is an essential food for every meal during the Chinese New Year. Powder skin. Grinding glutinous rice into rice slurry, and adding ingredients such as soybean, sesame and peanut. Pour the rice paste into an iron spoon and fry in an oil pan until dark red. Fried vermicelli tastes crisp, and it is one of the foods of Xian Yi guests, regardless of age. Sesame crisp, peanut crisp. The cooking method is similar to fried rice. Using sesame seeds and peanut kernels as raw materials, Sichuan sugar is fried into paste, then stirred with the fried sesame seeds and peanut kernels, poured into an iron basin, leveled and compacted, and cut into small squares. Sesame crisp and peanut crisp are also essential foods for Chinese New Year. The above materials are necessary for every family, and they are all processed and produced by themselves. In addition, oranges, melon seeds, biscuits and sweets are also indispensable. In recent years, it is expected that most of the purchases in the market are small, mainly for entertaining guests. Generally, the above materials will be basically prepared before the "Year of the Year" (December 25 of the lunar calendar). Lunar calendar1February 25th is the definition day for entering the New Year, that is to say, after1February 25th, it will enter the New Year stage. People who go out to work and do business want to come back. Lunar calendar1February 25th to 30th are the most tense days. Men, women and children are busy, mainly preparing for the Spring Festival as follows: sweeping the house. The house cleaning after "entering the New Year" is extraordinary. It's three-dimensional cleaning, and the whole family does it together. After thorough cleaning, indoors and outdoors, the windows are bright and clean, and people's mood is extremely comfortable, showing a new scene of old cloth everywhere. Grinding bean curd, dried fish, killing pigs, chickens and ducks. On December 28th of the lunar calendar, every household began to visit grinding bean curd. There are small fish in front of most farmhouses. Lunar calendar1around February 27th and 28th, all the fish are released to catch fish. On the one hand, it should be used for cooking, and on the other hand, it is convenient to dig it for fertilizer after the Spring Festival. Meanwhile, start killing pigs. Most people use 30-40 kilograms of pork for the New Year, and some people kill a big pig for the New Year. The main purpose is as follows: 1. As a gift for relatives and friends, every family should send two or three Jin of pork, especially the meat from the parents-in-law's family, and the amount of pork sent by the newly married parents-in-law is even more impressive, otherwise it will be ridiculed as "a lonely soul and a wild ghost". The whole family is busy until1February 30, and all the new year's goods are ready. The family is happy, especially the children are happy, eat well and dress well, and are not scolded by adults. People who go out for business or work should go home for a "reunion dinner" on New Year's Eve at the latest. This day is also the busiest. I don't know how to do what everyone wants to do, but everyone is happy and full of spring breeze. December 30 of the lunar calendar, also known as New Year's Eve, is what you must do on this day: take a bath with grapefruit leaves. Picking pomelo leaves in the morning, after noon, every household puts pomelo leaves in a pot to cook, and everyone should take a hot bath with pomelo leaves, which means washing away filth, "poverty" and "decay" and entering the new year cleanly. After washing pomelo leaves, put on new clothes, hats, socks and shoes, and look brand-new from head to toe. Wash dirty clothes on the same day. Therefore, washing pomelo leaves and taking a bath contains the meaning of old cloth and new one. This custom is getting weaker every year. Send the kitchen god. Buy back the statue of Kitchen God from the town in advance, write down the kitchen space (write down the family name and age), prepare offerings such as gold ingots, incense sticks, three sacrifices, wine, vegetarian fruit, etc., set up an "Eight Immortals Table" next to the kitchen and put the offerings on the table. The whole family, old and young, gathered in front of the statue of Kitchen God to salute, sincerely sent Kitchen God back to heaven to report his work, and prayed that Kitchen God would put in a good word in front of the Jade Emperor, so as to bless and eliminate disasters, prosper in the coming year and keep the family safe. When people worship sacrifices, they will only pray a few auspicious words to the kitchen god, such as "Bless the disaster and bless the peace of the family".