The origin and significance of dustpan

Once upon a time, there was a middle-aged man who left his family and went out to study. There was no news for more than three years. The day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, the man suddenly returned home. The family was overjoyed, and the neighbors came to congratulate him after hearing the news. In the evening, the wife told her husband how she had been able to maintain her life thanks to the help from the villagers for more than three years. The man was moved after hearing this. In order to repay the villagers, he and his wife discussed and decided to work together to make a food to repay everyone during the Mid-Autumn Festival the next day.

At dawn the next day, the man got up, picked up a hatchet and walked straight to the mountain behind the house. After a while, he found a bowl-sized moso bamboo, split it and cut it into pieces. Bamboo strips are used to weave a round bamboo plaque - a dustpan. The wife sat nearby and watched and wondered: How to make food with the tools made by her husband? Seeing the full moon-shaped object made by her husband, she came up with a good idea. So, I quickly put the white-flowered rice grown by myself into a stone pot and mashed it, then diluted the broken rice flour into rice slurry, then used a small spoon to evenly scoop the rice slurry into a dustpan, then put it into the pot and steamed it. After the water in the pot boils, remove the lid, take out the dustpan, and peel off the "rice milk" on the dustpan while it's hot. The cooked rice paste is white, thin and soft, like a full moon. Then it is wrapped with cooked ingredients and rolled up like a jade belt. She casually named it "scallop dumpling".

Everyone in the village was smiling and praising the novel food made by the couple together. Some villagers also gave birth to sons soon after eating the dustpan cake. The villagers asked them to introduce how to make this food, and the couple told everyone without reservation. Women in the whole village quickly learned how to make it. Later, people felt that "strap cake" was not appropriate enough, and after consensus, it was changed to "dustpan cake". From then on, during the Mid-Autumn Festival every year, no matter how much or little food there was, the villagers would always steam and taste the dustpan cakes. This custom has been followed to this day. More and more people eat this kind of dustpan cakes, and the praise of dustpan cakes spreads more and more widely. It has since become a famous Hakka snack.