The Origin of Chongyang Cake?

The Origin of Chongyang Gao (重阳糕)

September 9 of the lunar calendar is the Chongyang Festival, a traditional festival in China. There are a lot of Chrysanthemum customs that have been passed down in different parts of the world, the most common of which is to eat "Chrysanthemum Cake". Chrysanthemum Festival to eat heavy sun cake custom in the Northern Song Dynasty has been very prevalent. According to the "Tokyo Dreaming Records" said: when Bianjing (now Kaifeng City) city, Chongyang "one or two days before, each with flour steamed cake feed, a small flag inserted color cutting. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Chrysanthemum cake has become a seasonal delicacy in the store supply, "this day all the people store, to sugar steamed cake, inserted under the color flag, called 'Chrysanthemum cake'" ("Mengliang Records").

Setting September 9 as the Chongyang Festival is generally believed to have begun in the Han Dynasty. (According to Zhou Chu, "Records of Customs and Earth") said, "September only day ...... popular on this day, folded cornelian cherry to plug, said to avoid the bad air and protect the first cold." Also said: "to Chongyang will meet, mountaineering drink chrysanthemum wine, called the high meeting, also cloud cornelian cherry will." About the Chongyang Festival and the origin of the custom of Chongyang there is such a story with storage: the Han Dynasty Hengjing with the "Yi" master Fei Changfang traveled to learn more after. One day, master Fei said to his disciple, September 9, your family has a big trouble, you must immediately go home, tell the family with dogwood tied to the arm, raise the family to ascend. On the 9th day of the 9th lunar month, all the livestock of Hengjing's family died of plague, while Hengjing and his family listened to the master's words and were spared (from the book "The Record of Qi Harmony").

In fact, the Chongyang festival originated from the Taoist teachings of the Han Dynasty. In the I Ching, which is regarded as a classic by Taoists, the yang line "nine" is a pronoun for "yang" and "masculine", so the ancients called September "the month of yang" and the ninth day "the month of yang". ", nine days is "Yang Day", September 9 is the overlap of the two Yang, so it is called "Chongyang". Yang for just, Chongyang for the two just meet, Taoism called the "two just to be" and is regarded as "doom day", but also produced a "doom day" method, the so-called climb up to insert dogwood is only a way to get out of the "doom day"! The so-called climbing up and inserting cornelian cherry is only one of the ways to get rid of "厄日".

Cornelian cherry is a deciduous tree, Cornus officinalis, Cornus officinalis, Cornus officinalis, and Cornus officinalis, which is pungent and spicy, is one of the common herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine, and can also be used as a condiment in food. There are dozens of Tang poems that mention the custom of inserting cornelian cherry at Chrysanthemum Festival: "Learning to insert cornelian cherry at a young age" (Zhu Fang), "Cornelian cherry at the temples is good for longevity" (Wang Changling), "Dancing maids swinging down cornelian cherry room (Bai Juyi), and "Forcibly sticking cornelian cherry blossoms into the temples" (Yang Heng), while Du Fu's "Who will be at this meeting next year, and who will be looking at the cornelian cherry blossoms in a drunken stupor" ("Poem of Cui on the Ninth Day of the Orchid"), and Wang Wei's "I know where my brother Wei is climbing up to the top, and I have inserted cornelian cherry blossoms all over the place" ("Remembering Shandong Brothers on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month") are still popular Tang poems. From these poems can be seen in the Tang Dynasty Chongyang Festival has evolved into the literati and scholars to climb high to enjoy the autumn, the association of poetry festival, the original dogwood inserted to drive away evil customs have also changed into a far away from his hometown travelers think of their brothers and parents of the day. "The world's roads are dangerous, and the smoke at your door is deep. Every year, I go up to a high place, and I am not sad" (Liu Yuxi's poem "Nine Days on the Same Path").

Song Dynasty, the Chrysanthemum Festival to insert cornelian cherry blossoms and evolved into a custom of eating sun cakes. It is said that the custom of eating Chongyang cake on Chongyang Festival was born out of the literati's pen and ink lawsuit. Song Zi, a Song dynasty scholar, believed that Liu Yuxi, in his poem "Ascending to the Heights on the Ninth Day", originally wanted to write "where the cake is eaten year after year", but there was no "cake" in the classics at that time, so he was forced to write the word "high". He also wrote a poem to ridicule: "Liu Lang did not dare to write the word "cake", but he was not worthy of a world of greatness in poetry" (see Luo Dajing's "Hualin Yulu" in the Song Dynasty). In fact, the steamed cake with flour had already appeared in the Tang Dynasty, but it was not a Chongyang Festival custom. In the Song Dynasty, the city's economy gradually prospered, the city appeared in the independent operation of the cake food stores, "cake" and ascend to the "high" resonance, so eat cake gradually instead of the custom of ascending the heights. Shopkeepers in order to attract business. And imitation "insert cornelian cherry" story central each cake inserted on a small colorful flag instead of "cornelian cherry", specifically in the Chung Yeung Festival before the sale, beautifully called "Chung Yeung cake". Visible Chongyang cake is the Song people in accordance with the story of the Han and Tang Dynasty designed food new products, it is not only the integration of the ancient customs of the Chung Yeung wind, but also an exquisite festival food. Ancient ingenious food design is not also worth learning today!

"Steam out the date cake full of store fragrance, still wind and rain ancient Chongyang. Hundreds of workers a Chin Denggao wine, lights sound machine night work busy." Chung Yeung Festival eat more Chung Yeung cake, I wish you all the best, step by step to climb high.