Rice cakes are common delicacies during the Spring Festival.

Rice cakes are popular traditional food and New Year food in East Asia. In the early days, rice cakes were used for offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors, and later they gradually became a kind of Lunar New Year food, steamed with sticky glutinous rice or rice flour.

There is an old legend about the origin of Spring Festival rice cakes. In ancient times, there was a monster named Nian, who lived in the deep mountains and forests all the year round. When he is hungry, he catches other animals to satisfy his hunger. But in the severe winter, most animals hide and sleep. When you are hungry, you go down the mountain to hurt the people, rob people for food, and make the people miserable. Later, there was a clever tribe called "Gaozu". Every winter, when the monster was expected to go down the mountain for food, he cooked a lot of food with food in advance, twisted it into strips and put it outside the door, while people hid at home. When "Nian" came, people couldn't find anyone to eat. When they were hungry, they filled their stomachs with food strips made by people and went back to the mountains after eating. When people saw the monster go, they all went out to congratulate each other, glad that they had escaped the "Year Pass" and were safe and ready to plough again in spring. In this way, year after year, this method of avoiding animal harm has been handed down. Because the grain bars are made of high, in order to feed the year, the year and the height are linked together, which is called the rice cake (homophonic).