"Drunk in the Qingming Festival, the pig's skull smells" is a Tujia saying. Why do they eat "pig's skull" in Tomb-Sweeping Day?

Chinese people have different things to eat at different traditional festivals. For example, we said that we should eat jiaozi in 28, Yuanxiao in the Lantern Festival, moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival and zongzi in the Dragon Boat Festival.

In many southern areas of China, such as Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong, local people like to eat Qingming fruit when they visit Tomb-Sweeping Day, which is a food custom handed down from ancient times. People believe that after eating Qingming fruit on this day, they can be blessed by their ancestors. If you use Qingming fruit to worship your ancestors, it will bless your family's fortune to develop continuously.

Nowadays, these food customs have lost their original memorial significance, and they have become a hobby for people to taste seasonal cakes in spring. People eat Qingming fruit by themselves and give it to their relatives and friends as a gift from Tomb-Sweeping Day.

In some Tujia areas in Hubei and Hunan, when the local Tujia people visited Tomb-Sweeping Day, there was no custom of eating Qingming fruit. What do they eat when they are in Tomb-Sweeping Day? "Qingming is drunk, and the pig's skull smells." Yes, they ate pig skulls when they were in Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Pig's head meat

If you want to ask them what is the special significance of eating pig's skull, he won't tell you, and they don't know. Perhaps, like the Qingming fruit they eat in Fujian, a complete pig's skull should also be used as a memorial to their ancestors in the past, but now it has become food on people's tables and a unique food custom in Tujia areas.

Actually, the author is also a Tujia. When we were in Tomb-Sweeping Day, Tujia people had many other customs and cultures besides eating pig skulls. You can come to visit us and feel it.