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Customs

The evening of the last day of the lunar year. In addition to removing the old and replacing the old with the new. The last day of the year is called "New Year's Eve" and that night is called "New Year's Eve". People often stay up all night on New Year's Eve, which is called staying up all night. Su Shi's "Shou Sui": "Children are forced not to sleep, but stay up all night and rejoice." There is a legend about the origin of New Year's Eve: In ancient times, there was a ferocious monster named Xi, and our ancestors suffered from this most ferocious beast. Threat, it comes out to harm people every year. Later, people discovered that Xi is afraid of three things, red color, fire and sound. So in winter, people hung red peach boards on their doors, lit fires at the door, and stayed up all night, banging and banging. That night, "Xi" broke into the village and saw red and fire lights in every house. Hearing the loud noise, he was so frightened that he ran back to the mountains and never dared to come out again. As the night passed, people congratulated each other, put on lanterns and streamers, drank and held banquets to celebrate the victory. So on the next New Year's Eve, every household would put up red Spring Festival couplets and set off firecrackers to drive away the New Year's Eve beasts and seek peace in the new year. This custom has been passed down since then, and the New Year's Eve night is called New Year's Eve.

Keeping the year old on New Year's Eve is one of the most important annual customs. The custom of keeping the year old has been around for a long time. The earliest record can be found in the "Fengtu Zhi" of Zhouchu in the Western Jin Dynasty: On New Year's Eve, each person greets each other with gifts, which is called "giving the new year"; "Dividing the year old"; everyone stays up all night waiting for the dawn, which is called "keeping the year old".

“One night is two years old, and the fifth watch is divided into two days.” On New Year’s Eve, the whole family gets together, has New Year’s Eve dinner, lights candles or oil lamps, sits around the fire and chats, waiting to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. At this time, the all-night vigil symbolizes driving away all evil plagues and looking forward to auspiciousness in the new year. This custom gradually became popular. In the early Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem about "keeping the year old": "The cold leaves the winter snow, and the warmth brings the spring breeze." To this day, people are still used to staying up late on New Year's Eve to welcome the new year. In ancient times, keeping up with the old age had two meanings: the elderly kept up with the old year to "say goodbye to the old year", which meant cherishing the time; the young ones kept up the old year to prolong the life of their parents. Since the Han Dynasty, the transition time between the new and the old year has generally been at midnight.

It is different in different places: There is such a legend in rural areas of Yunnan: a child who is 30 years old. grown ups. . Those who can't sleep mean that everyone stays up all night, waiting for dawn, which is called "watching the New Year's Eve". The difference is why can't you sleep? Adults usually tell children: If you fall asleep, the stalks in your field will fall over the next year. . If it falls, let the sleeping people fix it! It seems that if no one sleeps, the ground will not fall! (Yunnan custom)

There is a saying among Chinese folk that "firecrackers open the door". That is to say, when the New Year arrives, the first thing every household does when they open the door is to set off firecrackers to ward off the old and welcome the new with the beeping sound of firecrackers. Firecrackers are a specialty of China, also known as "firecrackers", "firecrackers" and "firecrackers". It originated very early and has a history of more than 2,000 years. Setting off firecrackers can create a festive and lively atmosphere. It is a festive entertainment activity that can bring people joy and good luck. With the passage of time, the application of firecrackers has become more and more widespread, and the varieties and colors have become more and more numerous. During major festivals and happy events, as well as weddings, house construction, openings, etc., firecrackers must be set off to celebrate and for good luck. Now, Liuyang in Hunan, Foshan and Dongyao in Guangdong, Yichun and Pingxiang in Jiangxi, and Wenzhou in Zhejiang are famous hometowns of fireworks in my country. The firecrackers they produce are of various colors and high quality, and are not only sold well across the country, but also exported to the world.

In ancient agricultural societies, from about the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, housewives would be busy preparing food for the New Year. Because pickling cured meat takes a long time, it must be prepared as early as possible. Many provinces in my country have the custom of pickling cured meat, among which Guangdong Province’s cured meat is the most famous.

Steamed rice cake. Rice cake has become a must-have seasonal food for almost every household because of its homophonic pronunciation of "year high" and its varied tastes. The styles of rice cakes include square yellow and white rice cakes, which symbolize gold and silver and convey the meaning of getting rich in the new year.

The taste of rice cakes varies from place to place. Beijingers like to eat red date rice cake, mince rice cake and white rice cake made from glutinous rice or yellow rice. People in Hebei like to add jujube, red beans, mung beans, etc. to rice cakes and steam them together. In northern Shanxi and Inner Mongolia and other places, it is customary to eat fried rice cakes made with yellow rice flour during the Chinese New Year. Some are also filled with bean paste, date paste and other fillings. Shandong people steam rice cakes with yellow rice and red dates. Northern rice cakes are mainly sweet and can be steamed or fried. Some people even eat them dipped in sugar.

The rice cakes in the south are both sweet and salty. For example, the rice cakes in Suzhou and Ningbo are made from japonica rice and have a light taste. In addition to steaming and frying, it can also be sliced ??and fried or cooked in soup. The sweet rice cake is made of glutinous rice flour with ingredients such as sugar, lard, rose, osmanthus, mint, and sujiang. It is carefully made and can be steamed directly or dipped in egg white and fried.

The night before the actual Chinese New Year is called Reunion Eve. People who have traveled far away from home have to rush home thousands of miles away. The whole family will sit together to make dumplings for the New Year. The dumplings are made by mixing the dough first. Make dumpling skins, and then use the skins to wrap the fillings. The content of the fillings can be varied, including various meats, eggs, seafood, seasonal vegetables, etc. The orthodox way to eat dumplings is to boil them with water, scoop them out and season with Eat with soy sauce of vinegar, minced garlic, and sesame oil as condiments. There are also ways to eat fried dumplings and baked dumplings (pot stickers). Because the word "和" in noodles means "合"; the characters "dumpling" and "Jiao" in dumplings are homophones, and "合" and "Jiao" also mean getting together, so dumplings are used to symbolize reunion and joy; and they are also used to symbolize reunion. The meaning of Jiaozi is very auspicious; in addition, because dumplings resemble ingots in shape, eating dumplings during the Chinese New Year also has the auspicious meaning of "bringing in wealth and treasure". The whole family gathers together to make dumplings, talk about the New Year, and have fun.

The origin of the Spring Festival

The Spring Festival is the most distinctive traditional festival in China. It marks the end of the old lunar year.

The Spring Festival was originally called "New Year's Day". Du Taiqing of the Sui Dynasty said in the "Five Candles Collection": "The first month is the Dragon Moon, and the first day is the Yuan Day, which is also the Zhengchao and Yuan Shuo." The original meaning of "Yuan" is "head", which was later extended to "beginning". Because this day is the first day of the year, the first day of spring, and the first day of the first month, it is called "Sanyuan"; because this day is also the first day of the year. Chao, the dynasty of the moon, and the dynasty of the sun, so it is also called the "Three Chaos"; and because it is the first lunar day, it is also called the "Yuan Shuo". Wu Zimu of the Song Dynasty explained in "Meng Liang Lu": "The first day of the first lunar month is called New Year's Day." The explanation of the word "Dan" in "Shuowen Jiezi" is "From the sun to the sky, one is the ground." It means that the sun has just risen from the horizon, which means morning. Because they represent the first morning of the year and the first morning of the first month respectively, they are called "New Year's Day" and "Zhengdan".

Due to different calendars in different dynasties, the season of New Year’s Day is also different. The ancient Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar, which requires taking into account the positions of the sun and the moon. Therefore, when determining New Year's Day, it is necessary to first determine that it is in a certain season, and then select the new moon that is similar to this season as New Year's Day. Since one year is not equal to the 12 lunar calendar days, the difference is about 11 days, so a leap month needs to be set up every three years to adjust the seasons. Ancient Chinese astronomers once figured out a simple way to judge the relationship between the month sequence and the seasons. This is to determine the moon sequence based on the direction of the handle of the bucket at dusk, which is called the December Jian. Starting from the north and turning eastward, the ground is divided into 12 directions. The direction pointed by the bucket handle at dusk is the month of that month. The Zi month, the Chou month, and the Yin month are respectively equivalent to the eleventh, twelfth, and first lunar months. .

China is an ancient multi-ethnic country. Different nationalities in different historical periods have determined their own New Year's Day based on their own cultural traditions and customs, that is, changing it to "Zhengshuo" and correcting the time of the first day of the lunar month. Emperor Zhuanxu and the Xia Dynasty both used the first lunar month of Mengchun as the Yuan Dynasty, that is, using the Xia calendar of the Jian Yin period, the first day of the first lunar month was New Year's Day; the Shang Dynasty used the Yin calendar, and the Yin calendar Jian Chou took the first day of the twelfth lunar month as the New Year's Day; the Zhou Dynasty used the Zhou calendar, and the Zhou Dynasty used the Zhou calendar. The first day of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar was used as New Year's Day; the Qin Dynasty used the Qin calendar, which marked the first day of the 11th lunar month as New Year's Day; the Qin calendar was still used in the early Western Han Dynasty, and was switched to the first year of Taichu in the Han Dynasty (AD 104). The Taichu calendar created by Sima Qian and Luo Xiahong reused Jianyin's Xia calendar, with the first day of the first lunar month as New Year's Day. From then on, all dynasties used the Xia calendar until the end of the Qing Dynasty, except that Wang Mang and Emperor Ming of Wei once switched to the Yin calendar of Jian Chou, and Empress Wu and Su Zong of the Tang Dynasty switched to the Zhou calendar of Jian Zi.