Moral of the Lantern Festival

The so-called "Caiqing" is the night of the Lantern Festival, women traveled in groups, by hand, from the passing vegetable field to steal a few green vegetables home to cook and eat.

"Caiqing" is a folk custom, every first month of the lunar calendar, the 15th (Lantern Festival) night to go out and "swim a hundred diseases", to the other family's land to "Caiqing! ", which is rumored to steal a year of good luck. The object of picking green is generally the field inside the crops, but are symbolic, picking vegetables, Cantonese means wealth, picking green onions, means smart, picking garlic, means can count, and so on and so forth.

It is said to be a traditional custom in Sichuan Leshan, Meishan, Yibin, Luzhou area only, three or two groups, the family about to go to pick the green is a very happy thing, the old people say, picking the green to be able to bring everyone a year of good luck. The owner of the stolen will not be angry, because other people steal their own vegetables, that their own vegetables planted well, especially in the modern world, the material standard is not low, steal the green has become a kind of sentiment.

The origin of the Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month of the ancient tradition of the four traditional customs: eating Lantern Festival, tour of the hundred diseases, picking the green, the Lantern Festival. Stealing the origin of the green, folklore has a variety of legends. The most widely spread is from the story of Meng Jiangnu. Meng Jiangnu, who was searching for her husband for thousands of miles, suffered from hunger on her way to the Great Wall, and could not bear it, so she ran to someone's vegetable field and stole some greens to feed her stomach.

Afterwards, women sympathized with her misfortune and commemorated her with "stealing greens", but the story varies from place to place, and the real reason is unknown to many people.