What are the customs of Yancheng Spring Festival?

Yancheng's Spring Festival customs include: busy New Year, sending stoves to pick up stoves, dusting, pressing the New Year, setting off firecrackers, playing incense and so on. Yancheng is a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Jiangsu Province, which belongs to the second-class big city and is the central city of the Yangtze River Delta. It is located in the east coast of China, east of Jiangsu, east of the Yellow Sea, south of Nantong, southwest of Yangzhou and Taizhou, northwest of Huai 'an, and north of Guanhe and Lianyungang.

What are the customs of Yancheng Spring Festival?

A busy year

Just like folk songs, people in old Yancheng have been busy preparing glutinous rice flour and ground noodles since the twelfth lunar month. After the twelfth lunar month, steamed rice cakes, cakes and fried rice began. Some people also put red stamps on rice cakes. After the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month, people should "please" incense sticks and bodhisattvas. Rich people will also write the dates, brown sugar, fried fruits and big cakes they want to buy on paper, which is called "playing the annual ticket". As the Spring Festival approaches, every household will buy fish. There is also the custom of buying catfish in Xixiang, Yancheng, which means "more than one year".

Send the stove to the stove.

Yancheng people collectively refer to sending and receiving stoves as sacrificial stoves, and the Spring Festival begins with sacrificial stoves. In the past, there was a special "kitchen god" in every kitchen of ordinary people. People call it "Siming Bodhisattva" or "the stove master Siming", who is responsible for managing the stove of every household. "Twenty-three" in folk songs; "Melon stick" refers to the sacrificial furnace on the 23rd or 24th of the twelfth lunar month. There is also a folk saying called "official, three people, four boatmen, five", that is, the official held a kitchen sacrifice on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, people's homes on the 24th and boat people on the 25th.

dust

After the stove was delivered, people began to prepare for the New Year, that is, from the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to New Year's Eve. This day is called "Spring Festival", also called "Dust Day" or "Dust Day".

Extrusion age

The 30th or 29th of the twelfth lunar month is called "Thirty Nights", and the whole family should get together and have a "Shoujiu". After dinner, the elders at home usually wrap the money in red paper and give it to their children and grandchildren to express their blessings; Some people give lucky money to the younger generation on the morning of New Year's Day, which is called "pocketing the money", indicating that there is no shortage of money for the New Year. All these, collectively referred to as "lucky money", are intended to ward off evil spirits and wish good health and all the best in the new year.

Set off firecrackers and burn incense.

On New Year's Day, people get up early to set off firecrackers. A layman must first get up, light incense and candles and pray for peace. In the past, the rich in the countryside hung lanterns at the door and burned incense in the yard. After getting up in the morning, children must eat some sweets before they can speak. Drink glutinous rice dumplings tea for breakfast. When the younger generation at home wants to pay a New Year call to their elders, the neighbors congratulate each other when they meet, congratulating each other on "Congratulations on getting rich" and "All the best" and so on. Children are the most active in paying New Year greetings. They knocked on doors in droves.

What do the North and the South eat for the New Year?

The Spring Festival is the most grand festival for everyone in China, and what to eat during the Spring Festival is the most important part of the festival. However, due to China's vast territory, the dietary customs of the North and the South are also different. During the Spring Festival, jiaozi is generally eaten in the north, and there are many kinds of New Year's Eve dinners in the south. Below, the author will take you to see what the north and the south eat during the Spring Festival.

Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the eating customs of New Year's Eve are obviously different in the south and the north. On New Year's Eve in the north, jiaozi eats more, which means "making friends when young" in homophonic. On New Year's Eve in the south, people usually eat Yuanxiao and rice cakes. Yuanxiao is also called "Tangyuan", "Tuanzi" and "Zi Yuan", with more sugar in the middle, which means a happy and sweet family reunion. The rice cake is made of glutinous rice, which is homophonic "high every year". However, in different parts of the south, the answer to what to eat during the Spring Festival is different.

The day before the Spring Festival is called New Year's Eve. In ancient times, it was called "year's minute" or "gradual minute". The eating customs of New Year's Eve are different in the north and the south.

Northerners regard jiaozi as delicious food, including jiaozi and steamed dumplings. This is for a party, which means "making friends when you are young". In order to get lucky, some jiaozi put some candy bars, which means that life will be sweet next year; Some put a "money-making" in jiaozi and eat in jiaozi. There are places to make money, and one family is prosperous.

There is a tradition of eating jiaozi at the Northern New Year's Eve. Although jiaozi has long been a popular daily snack, the custom of eating jiaozi varies from place to place. Some places eat jiaozi on New Year's Eve, some places eat jiaozi on the first day, and some mountainous areas in the north have the custom of eating jiaozi every morning from the first day to the fifth day. Eating jiaozi is a unique way for people to express their wish for good luck when they bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. According to the method of punctuality in ancient China, the time is from 1 1 in the evening to 1 the next morning.

"Intersection" is the moment when the new year and the old year intersect. Jiaozi means getting married at an older age, and eating jiaozi during the Spring Festival is considered a great luck. In addition, jiaozi is shaped like an ingot, wrapping jiaozi means wrapping good luck, while eating jiaozi symbolizes prosperity. Different from the north, the New Year's Eve dinner in the south usually has hot pot and fish. Hot pot boiling, steaming, warm and sultry, thriving; "Fish" and "fish" are homophonic, symbolizing "good luck and wishful thinking", and also implying happiness in life and "having more than one year". There are also some places in the south that pay attention to eating rice cakes during the Spring Festival, which is high every year, symbolizing a bumper harvest year by year and a higher realm.

In the south, people regard rice cakes, Yuanxiao, muffins, zongzi, fish, meat and vegetables as delicious. Eat more rice cakes and Yuanxiao on New Year's Eve. Yuanxiao is also called "Tuanzi" or "Zi Yuan", which means "family reunion". Rice cakes are mostly made of glutinous rice, which means that production and life are "high every year". Before the New Year's Eve, in the old society, ancestors were usually worshipped and given some food as a souvenir. As soon as the midnight bell rang, the resignation ceremony began. The whole family pays homage to the ancestors' spirits, and the children pay homage to their elders in the order of generations. Younger students can receive "lucky money" from their elders, which means restraining "evil worship"

Southerners make tea for Chinese New Year and put two olives on a tea tray or bowl cover, which is called "treasure-free tea". When eating in the New Year, there must be cooking, saying that eating "kissing hot"; Be sure to eat bean sprouts, because the shape of bean sprouts is like "Ruyi"; You must eat fish heads for every meal, but you can't eat them all. This is the so-called "leftover fish".

On the first day of the first month, people get up early and wish each other well. For breakfast, northerners eat jiaozi and southerners eat glutinous rice balls. After breakfast, people put on new clothes and go to relatives, friends and neighbors to pay New Year greetings and wish all the best in the new year. Every household will entertain guests with snacks such as melon seeds, peanuts and candy. On this day, people mostly eat food prepared before the festival, which means "more than enough". Most northerners eat steamed bread, while southerners mainly eat rice. The food eaten in the north during the New Year is not the same as that in the south, but it is also somewhat similar. They are all passed down from history, but regional differences have caused the current diversification.

The same thing between the north and the south is that you must eat rice cakes during the New Year. Eat rice cakes and wish your life a "high year after year". Suzhou's sweet-scented osmanthus rice cakes, Ningbo's Shuimo rice cakes, Beijing's red jujube rice cakes and Baiguo rice cakes are all good New Year's cakes. "Deserve the righteousness, win the year, and pray for the year." It means that every year goes well. The types of rice cakes are: white rice cakes and yellow rice cakes in the north; There are water mill rice cakes in Jiangnan; There is glutinous rice in the southwest; There are red turtle cakes in Taiwan Province province. "Gao" has been called in Han dialect, which was popular in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Although there is a habit of eating rice cakes in the south, the taste of rice cakes varies from place to place. In the north, rice cakes are mainly sweet, steamed or fried, and some people simply eat them with sugar. Almost all parts of the country eat rice cakes, and the word "sticky" is homophonic with the word "year", which originally means that the grain is ripe. Eating sticky cakes means that the harvest is better and higher every year. Now it is called rice cake.

Although there are differences between the north and the south during the Spring Festival, the theme is to welcome the New Year. On the contrary, the difference of what the North and the South eat during the Spring Festival reflects the profoundness of China's cultural tradition and the long-term continuation of China's culture.