Long street banquet and transfer banquet

The highlight of the Spring Festival is the reunion dinner and the banquet.

I was quite envious when I saw the folk custom of long street banquet introduced on TV. People from the whole street gathered together. Pushing the cup and cup, it has the charm of Liangshan heritage.

I have never had the Long Street Banquet. I don’t know the detailed process of the Long Street Banquet, so I don’t dare to comment.

But I am relatively familiar with seat transfer. Let me talk about the transfer seats that I am familiar with.

Transferring seats is a unique custom of the mountain people in the Han River Basin in southern Shaanxi. It is relatively dense in several canyon basins in the Micang Mountains in Zhenba County, Shaanxi Province.

What is seat transfer? Zhuanzhuanxi means that the whole village eats and eats on the wheel one by one during the Spring Festival.

What I saw most in Micangshan Miao Township were the large tables and matching benches used for banquets. Basically every house has two or three sets of tables, chairs and stools. I have seen many families with six sets.

The plates, bowls and chopsticks must all match.

Generally, farmhouses have spacious main halls and mansions. When there is an important event at home, you basically don’t have to go to other people’s homes to borrow tables, chairs, benches, pots, bowls, plates, dishes, etc. With so many seats in one's own house, it would be a problem to have seven or eight seats in one wheel.

In other places, I also saw farmhouses with banquet tables and stools. But most of them only have one set, unlike the farmhouses in this area, which have at least three or four sets per household.

The purchase of so many banquet utensils is also due to their generous and hospitable folk customs.

In the past, transportation in mountainous areas was inconvenient, and mountain residents’ households were relatively remote and sparse. The villagers have a banquet for a trivial occasion, and it is very inconvenient to rent these equipment. The villagers used the abundant wood to make tables, chairs and stools during their spare time.

In the Han River Basin, it was customary for married women to give away tables, chairs, benches, boxes and cabinets as a substitute for their marriage. Nowadays, all modern household appliances are used.

Having talked about the banquet utensils, let’s talk about transferring the tables.

Seat transfer usually starts from the first day of the new year. The reunion dinner on New Year's Eve must be eaten at your own home. If a beggar comes to your lucky door on this day, he will definitely be invited into the house to eat at the same table. Because the popular custom says that adding new people to the house on this day will bring good fortune to the host family. Similarly, eating the reunion dinner at another house will also be a taboo for losing wealth.

If there are many brothers in the family, they are all married and the elderly are still alive, so the family can have the reunion dinner together at their parents' house. We cook together, prepare several tables together, stir-fry, cook, and serve tea and water with our sisters-in-law. Women in the mountains all have two skills. The dishes are both traditional and innovative. Seven large plates and eight large bowls are a must-have tradition.

What are the fifteen dishes? Friends who are interested may check the traditional Shaanxi recipes. I won’t go into details to avoid lengthy text.

The transfer of seats is in order from elder to younger.

On the first day of junior high school, I should be at my brother’s house. On the second day of the Lunar New Year, we all went to Laozhan's house to pay New Year greetings. On the third or fourth day of junior high school, the rotation starts from the second, third, and...neighbors.

People in a clan or village have many homes, and there are many people together. Including neighbors, there are many people in each home, and several tables are opened together, and the cooks help the cooks. (Palm) The person who makes the plate plays the plate, and eats a big banquet every day. In a village with many households, even the first month of the year would not be able to complete one round.

Think about the scale of this?

I remember that in the 1980s, a writer named Jingfu introduced this kind of folk custom in southern Shaanxi in his novel. He used "luxury" to describe it.

There is another very interesting phenomenon. At ordinary banquets, dishes are served and removed at the same time, but the dishes on the transfer table cannot be finished.

It is the custom in my hometown to put the plate away on the table after finishing the food. Not here, there were times when I finally finished the dish in front of me, and the host would add the same dish again.

Drinking is also a traditional program, but it is better now than before. Afraid of being jointly and severally liable, everyone basically does what they can. Liquor, beer and drinks are all provided, so you can drink whatever you want.

Women in Miao villages can drink. It is common to drink five or six taels of liquor, and it is not uncommon to drink more than a kilogram of liquor. He is cheerful by nature, and he is afraid of not being well received when entertaining guests.

In today’s mountain villages, there are many people driving back to celebrate the reunion, and you can see many license plates from other provinces.

Wanderers who work hard outside, even though they are far away from each other, can never forget the visit to their hometown.