The origin of bad soup

In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, Taizhou Linhai was still a small fishing village, which was often invaded by pirates. At that time, Weichi Gong, the secretariat of Taizhou, launched soldiers to build a city to guard against theft. On the day of construction, it happened to be the fourteenth day of the first month. As usual, the people want to celebrate the Lantern Festival, and pirates take the opportunity to enter. When Weichi Gong heard the news, he sent troops to resist and stepped up his defense.

In the evening, it was snowing, and people discussed how to express their inner gratitude. Some people suggested sending food and wine to keep out the cold, but the secretariat ordered the soldiers not to drink. An old man came up with a good way to kill two birds with one stone, that is, use bad new wine as water, add good vegetables and powder, stir it into "bad soup" and send it. The soldiers ate the "bad soup" and were full of energy, and soon built the city wall. Since then, the custom of eating "bad soup" at Yuanxiao has been passed down from generation to generation.

Introduction of bad soup

Rotten soup is a traditional snack in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, which belongs to Zhejiang cuisine and is also a holiday food of Taizhou Lantern Festival. Bad soup is made of rice flour, potato flour or lotus root starch, which is salty and sweet. Yuanxiao eats dumplings everywhere, and Taizhou eats rotten soup. After seeing lanterns on the fourteenth day of the first month every year, people will go home and enjoy bad soup.

The custom in Taizhou is to eat salty soup on the fourteenth day of the first month and sweet mountain noodle sauce on the fifteenth day of the first month. Fried shredded pork, shredded winter bamboo shoots, mushrooms, fungus, fresh clams, dried beans, oil bubbles, Sichuan bean plates, etc. Add a little rice flour and mustard leaves to cook salty paste food. The rotten soup drunk on the fifteenth day of the first month is sweet, made of sweet potato powder or lotus root powder with lotus seeds, candied dates and longan.