What is a traditional Chinese birthday celebration like?

Birthday celebrations, an ancient tradition

Birthday celebrations, an ancient tradition. The earliest birthday celebrations in China can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty, more than 3,000 years ago. By the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the phenomenon of celebrating birthdays had become common, even though there was no complete ritual for birthday celebrations. Legend has it that Sun Bin, a famous military man in ancient China, gave a peach to his mother on her 80th birthday, and since then there has been a custom in China of giving birthday peaches to the elderly to celebrate their birthdays.

To the North and South Dynasties, China has formed a complete set of birthday wishes rituals. The Tang and Song dynasties were the peak of the development of longevity rites and customs. According to historical records, Tang Minghuang, a popular emperor, celebrated his birthday as the "Holy Birthday Festival", which was the first birthday celebration of Chinese emperors, and all subsequent emperors had their own "Holy Birthday Festival".

With the continuous development of society, birthday gift has become an important means of interpersonal communication, dignitaries use birthday gifts to climb the dragon, the common people by birthday gifts to maintain human relations. At the same time people over the birthday of the preoccupation is also more and more, a year old grasp week, ten years old long tail, the year of life, fifty big celebration, sixty on the life, eighty to make up for the life of the man to do nine not to do ten, the woman to do enough not to do zero, a hundred years old smacked full of not do life and so on. By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China has formed a unique national characteristics of the birthday etiquette culture, an important part of China's splendid national culture.

In the mid-20th century, the Western birthday culture was introduced to China, birthday cake, birthday candles, birthday cards, birthday party, has become an indispensable content of the Chinese birthday, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the birthday code, and the Westerners unique way of gift-giving, but also for the ancient Chinese birthday culture injected fresh blood.

Looking at the development of birthdays, no matter how the clouds of history have changed and how the world has changed, the theme of happy birthday has remained unchanged, and people's pursuit of happiness has always been the same. Today, the birthday has become the Chinese people to express affection, friendship, love expression, the connotation of the birthday gift is getting richer and richer, the style of the gift also began to personalized, diversified and fashionable. All of this has laid a solid foundation for the formation of an unlimited and broad birthday market, providing a strong guarantee for the arrival of the birthday economy.

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Why birthday noodles?

Tang Minghuang after the throne, gradually cold feet the original afflicted wife of Queen Wang, one day, Queen Wang said to Tang Minghuang Huamin: "Sanlang you forget when after I took off the newly made purple undershirt for a bucket of noodles, for you to make soup cakes for your birthday?" This story reflects that people in Tang Dynasty ate "soup cake" on their birthday. Soup cake is also called "water guide", that is, soup noodles, see the custom of eating soup noodles on birthday has a long history.

Descendants are called "birthday noodles" because they are used to celebrate birthdays. Because our food in the noodle is the most long, birthday eat noodles, said prolong life. Life must eat birthday noodles, birthday noodles require three feet, each bunch shall be more than a hundred roots, disk into a tower, with red and green openwork paper pull flowers cover above as a birthday gift, dedicated to the birthday star, must be double. Wish life on top of the birthday case. Eat birthday noodles is the most important diet for life.