How did ancient people celebrate Qingming? The ancient Qingming Festival is actually a food festival?

Spring is the time for trekking, and the festival is also the time when many seasonal delicacies come on the market, said Cai Bowen, a Nanjing folklorist. Nanjing folklore scholar Cai Bowen said, Qingming Festival trekking, picnic history, since ancient times. Ancient Qingming Festival is a "food festival", not only are there many seasonal foods on the market in this season of spring, but also the Qingming Festival and the ancient customs of the "cold food festival" are gradually overlapping today, and some of the specialties of the cold food festival have also been passed down.

Ancient women's "eat Qingming"

Chingming food has been around for a long time. Ancient people created some foods to meet the needs of cold food and banning fire and cold food. For example, with wheatgrass pounding juice and glutinous rice to make green powder dough, sebiferum juice dye Wu rice cake, or with toon buds mixed gluten, tender willow leaves mixed with tofu for cold food. The Qingming Festival was a sacrificial festival in ancient times, and the average family had to honor their ancestors with four plates and six bowls of delicacies and clear wine. After the sacrifice, family members and invited relatives*** enjoy the food and wine, called "eating Qingming". In ancient times in the south of the Yangtze River, people have to pick chestnuts to make wontons for the festival, Qingming tomb sweeping to do yellow flowers and green fruit cake as offerings, using a kind of chrysanthemum family of wild grasses of the young leaves mashed to juice and powder made of, very delicious. Moreover, the tradition of Qingming food also comes from the ancient picnics that followed the Qingming treks.

Specifically, women in ancient times were not allowed to go out during the week, and the ancestor worship and trekking on Qingming Day was a good time for women to go out in ancient times, they would dress up well and go out early to pay tribute to their ancestors, and then trekked on the green, so in ancient times, Qingming Day was also a festival for women to enjoy the spring color in the countryside, fly kites, and then have a picnic.

The custom of eating green dumplings has more than 2,000 years

Cai Bowen said, Jiangnan's "wheatgrass", Ching Ming and raw, over the hard to find, and because of this, made of wheatgrass green dumplings, in the folk folk Ching Ming customs in the southern belt of the extraordinarily important. Every Qingming, the people of Jiangnan will go to the field to pull a "wheat pulp grass", home pounded and pressed juice, and drying of the water milled pure glutinous rice flour mixed and good, wrapped in bean paste filling, folk know-how but also into a small piece of lard, the group into the cage steamed, out of the cage and then thinly brushed a layer of cooked vegetable oil on the surface. In addition, mugwort is also a common ingredient for Qingming. Steamed glutinous rice mixed with mugwort leaves and pounded into rice paste, wrapped in the middle of some peanut or sesame filling, and balled into a small green poop into the pot to steam, which became mugwort mochi.

"The food custom of eating green dumplings can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago." He said the traditional foods for the ancient cold food festival include glutinous rice cheese, wheat cheese and almond cheese yang. Nowadays, green dumplings are either made with green wormwood, or pounded with bird's-eye grass juice and glutinous rice flour then stuffed with bean paste, which is now fading as a ritual, while remaining popular as a delicacy.

The temptation of mussels and snails

Another tasty delicacy during the Qingming Festival in Nanjing is mussel and tofu soup. Nanjing people call mussels "crooked". You have to choose the ones that are not too big or too small, with red shells, and about six of them will be enough for a family of three to eat. Wash them again and again in hot water, sprinkle some salt on them, and then wash them again a few moments later. Use the back of a knife to loosen the hard edges, so that the boiled meat will not get old. Finally, the "crooked" cross-cut into one-centimeter-wide strips, bursting fire will be ginger, green onions, salted meat or ham meat, tofu, "crooked" pot, simmering into a thick soup, the flavor is exceptionally delicious, some can also be put inside the broad bean petals, or fresh bamboo shoots, rice plant, soup and meat fresh, eat! The March will not forget. But it is cold, can not eat more, people with a bad stomach, especially beware. Nanjing at this time another river food is fried snail. Fried snail, is a Nanjing flavor of river food dishes. Made of snails and chili peppers and a variety of seasonings, the flavor of fresh and spicy very addictive. Fried snail a fried a big plate, eat by yourself with your mouth shirts, but also directly with the snail meat fried vegetables to eat, such as leek fried snail, are the most fashionable dishes during the Qingming season.

The whole city digs wild vegetables together

A variety of fresh wild vegetables have become a delicacy on the table of Nanjing people during the Qingming Festival. Stir-fried artemisia or artemisia fried with fragrant dried, plus a little bit of sharp chili together, is simply a dish on the tip of the Nanjing people's heart. This season is also the best time to eat Malantou. The "Ballad of Western Wu Food Style" says: "Swallows fly in the spring breeze of February, bamboo shoots are absolutely tender and mussels are fat. Wolfberry, Malan taste good, egg spread tofu skin" Qingming eat wild vegetables is more fun to pick, every year during the Qingming Festival, Nanjing, many people spontaneously formed a "folk wild vegetables group", in the whole city to start the search for wild vegetables, trekking season with a small shovel small basket to dig wild vegetables, in pursuit of childhood gold! Memories, Mochou Lake, Xuanwu Lake, Meihuashan, the North Pole Pavilion, Jiangning, Bagua Zhou and other places, there are people while trekking excursions, while digging wild vegetables, Malan head, hen's head, pea head, goji berry head, pinch down the small shoots with your hands, go home to the pot and stir-fry, the aroma, green and healthy. And Nanjing has spring hair "eight wild" said, refers to the "dry eight fresh" and "water eight fresh" two categories, including chestnuts, artemisia, marjoram head, wolfberry head, alfalfa head, amaranth, goose child intestines and Toon head and so on. Qingming eat wild vegetables has become a feature of Nanjing.