Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional customs - Chinese New Year Food and Customs

Chinese New Year Food and Customs

The first day of the year in the Chinese lunar calendar is called the Spring Festival. It is the grandest traditional festival of the Chinese people, and it is also a festival that symbolizes unity, prosperity and new hopes for the future. Here take a look at the food and customs and activities of the Spring Festival that I have organized for you, welcome to read, just for reference.

Spring Festival food

1, dumplings

Dumplings are essential to the northern New Year's Eve dinner table food, dumplings and cross the harmonics, take the "more years of the cross the meaning of the child". Another is the shape of the dumplings, such as Yuanbao, Chinese New Year eating dumplings meant to "attract wealth into the treasure", people will also be coins wrapped in dumplings, eat the dumplings will have a good fortune in the new year.

2, rice cake

Early Suzhou people to commemorate Wu Zixu, New Year's Eve to make rice cakes, and then gradually prevalent in all parts of the country, such as Shandong's red jujube rice cake, Beijing's fruit rice cake, taro rice cake in Fujian, and red and white sugar rice cake, Ningbo's water milled rice cake, Suzhou's cinnamon sugar rice cake, and so on. Rice cake, which is the pronunciation of "year high", is a must-have food for the Spring Festival, sending people's expectations of "year high".

3, fish

Spring Festival diet pay attention to the good moral, of course, without fish, usually the last dish on the table, some places this dish basically left without eating, meaning that "year after year". And some places on the selection of the New Year's Eve dinner in the fish is also concerned, silver carp for the year, crucian carp and carp for good luck, salmon for the rich and valuable.

4, wontons

In Jiangsu Jingjiang, no matter whether it is entertaining guests or New Year's Eve or a happy event, you must eat wontons. On the morning of New Year's Eve, every family begins to chop vegetables and pack wontons, and from the thirtieth day of the new year until the fifteenth day of the first month of the new year, "wontons on the wine, the more you eat the more you have", which sends the people of Jingjiang's good wishes for the new year.

5, dumplings

Sichuan on the first day of the New Year's breakfast to eat dumplings, the day of the dumplings called "Yuanbao", eat dumplings called "get Yuanbao", take its reunion, complete, sweet meaning. Yangzhou people on the first day of the new year to eat four happy dumplings, symbolizing everything, family reunion; Shanghai people on the first day of the new year breakfast is also eaten dumplings, symbolizing the roundness, wealth and power.

Spring Festival customs

1. dust sweeping

"Lunar New Year's Eve 24, dust sweeping the house", according to the "Lui Spring and Autumn Annals" records, our country in the Yao and Shun era on the Spring Festival dust sweeping custom. According to folklore: because the "dust" and "Chen" harmonized, the New Year dust sweeping has "in addition to the meaning of Chen Bu Xin", the intention is to all poor luck, bad luck, swept out the door. This custom is a symbol of people's desire to break away from the old and bring in the new and their prayers for the old and the new. Whenever the Spring Festival comes, every household has to clean up the environment, wash all kinds of appliances, dismantle the bedding curtains, sprinkle clean the courtyard, dust dust cobwebs, dredge the nullahs and ditches. Everywhere overflowing with happy health, clean and welcome the new year's happy atmosphere.

2. Posting Spring Festival couplets

Spring Festival couplets, also known as door-to-door, spring stickers, couplets, couplets, peach symbols, etc., it is neat, couplets, simple, sophisticated text depicting the background of the times, expressing the best wishes, is unique to our country's literary form.

3. Decorate the window and reverse sticker "Fu" character

In folklore, people also like to put all kinds of paper cuttings on the window - window flowers. Window flowers not only set a festive atmosphere, but also set decorative, appreciative and practical in one.

4. Stickers

Spring Festival hanging stickers in urban and rural areas is also very common, thick black colorful paintings to thousands of families added a lot of prosperity and joy of the festive atmosphere. New Year's paintings are an ancient folk art in China, reflecting the people's simple customs and beliefs, and holding their hopes for the future.

5. New Year's Eve vigil

New Year's Eve vigil is one of the most important New Year's activities, the custom of the vigil has a long history. The earliest records are found in the Western Jin Dynasty Zhou Zhi's "Land and Customs": the night of New Year's Eve, each with the gift, known as "feed the year"; wine and food invited, known as the "other year"; young and old get together to drink, wishing to complete, known as the "sub-year"; we all end of the year to keep the year. "; we stay up all night, waiting for the dawn, called "keep the year".

6. Eat dumplings

The custom of eating dumplings on the Spring Festival in the Ming and Qing Dynasties has been quite prevalent. Dumplings are usually wrapped before 12:00 pm on the night of the thirtieth year, to be eaten in the middle of the night, when it is the beginning of the first day of the first month of the Lunar New Year, eating dumplings to persuade more years of the meaning of the word "Zi" for the "Zi Shi", and the delivery of the "dumplings". The "dumplings" harmonize with the meaning of "joyful reunion" and "good luck".

7. Firecrackers

Chinese folk "open door firecrackers" said. That is, the arrival of the new year, the first thing to open the door of every household is to set off firecrackers, to beeping firecrackers to get rid of the old and welcome the new. Firecrackers are a Chinese specialty, also known as "firecrackers", "cannonballs", "firecrackers".

8. New Year's Day

On the first day of the New Year, people get up early, put on the most beautiful clothes, dressed neatly, go out to visit friends and relatives, pay respect to each other, wishing good luck in the coming year. Worship a variety of ways, some of them are the same patriarch led a number of people to go door to door to pay tribute to the New Year; some colleagues invited a few people to pay tribute to the New Year; there are also get together to congratulate each other, known as the "reunion worship". Because of the time-consuming and laborious door-to-door New Year's greetings, and then some of the upper-class people and the scholarly community will use the stickers to throw congratulations to each other, which developed out of the later "New Year's card".

9. Watching the Spring Festival Gala

Now watching the Spring Festival Gala has basically become one of the main activities of the Spring Festival celebrations throughout China, and on the night of New Year's Eve, families sit around the TV to watch the Spring Festival Gala. When the bell rings in the early hours of the morning, they say happy new year to each other, and then basically start making dumplings to prepare for the next day's official New Year's Eve.

The night before the actual New Year's Eve is called the Reunion Night, when people who are away from home have to travel thousands of miles to come back home, and the whole family has to sit together to watch the Spring Festival Gala and make dumplings for the New Year's Eve.

Chinese New Year red packet number meaning

Chinese New Year red packet number is very concerned, the Chinese people are most concerned about the good things in pairs, the number of 6 on behalf of the six six, 8 on behalf of the wealth of auspicious, are very suitable for the red packet with the number of the Spring Festival when the package red packet in the choice of the even number of times to avoid the "4" the number of the red packet, the number of the red packet is very suitable for the package red packet with the number of the Spring Festival. "4" this number is very important, because 4 harmonic "dead", so in addition to these, the Spring Festival package red envelope and what to pay attention to it?

Different places pack the numbers are not the same, the north like whole numbers, 100, 200, and the south more like with 6 with 8 with 7 lucky number, to give an example of 68, 66, 88, 66.6, 88.8, said the heart.

168 - - 100 50 10 5 2 1 = 168. that is, with one hundred dollars, fifty dollars, ten dollars, five dollars, two dollars, one dollar bills wrapped into the 168 gift money. It means all the way to hair.

188 - "100 50 20 10 5 2 1 = 188", that is, in the "168" on top of the twenty-dollar bill of the "188". The moral is to be hairy.

366 - take the end of the number of smooth and lucrative moral.

600, 666 - represents smooth and favorable.

800, 888 - the number 8 has always been regarded as an auspicious number, harmonized with "hair", meaning wealth and smooth.

1666 - life all the way to the wind, implying that the new couple's future will be smooth sailing, good luck.

1688 - all the way to hair; 1888 lifetime hair.

1888 - take the meaning of "888".