Why does Qingming eat green glutinous rice balls? What is the significance of eating Qingming glutinous rice balls?

Introduction: It is said that China's food culture is profound, so every festival in history has its own unique food culture. Take Tomb-Sweeping Day as an example. On this day, people usually eat cold food to celebrate the festival, especially in the south of the Yangtze River. Qing Tuan is its traditional snack, but do you know why you want to eat Qing Tuan Zi in Qingming Festival? Let's take a look at the significance of eating Qingming dumplings.

Why does Qingming eat green jiaozi?

1, the old fire ban system

Tomb-Sweeping Day's eating cold food originated from the old fire ban system in Zhou Dynasty. According to "Zhou Li", there is a law that "Muduo is forbidden to burn in the fire in mid-spring", so people put out cooking and "eat cold food for three days". During the cold food period, that is, one or two days before the name is not named, it is also designated as the "Cold Day".

Is that you can't make a fire during Tomb-Sweeping Day. At this time, you can only prepare cold food in advance, such as Qingming Fruit Youth League, which is one of the most popular foods.

2. The symbol of hope and life

Tomb-Sweeping Day is also called Cold Food Festival. The main purpose of the Cold Food Festival is to ban smoking and eat cold food. In ancient times, it was a transitional ceremony to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, symbolizing new hope and new life. In addition, Tomb-Sweeping Day's eating cold food also means "gratitude", emphasizing nostalgia and gratitude for the past.

3. Inheritance of culture

At present, the function of the Youth League as a grave-sweeping sacrifice may gradually fade away, and more people regard it as a snack. Eating cold food in Tomb-Sweeping Day is also a cultural heritage and development. Upgrading "eating" to "culture" can also better publicize our traditional culture and make Chinese culture linger in every corner of the world.

What is Green jiaozi?

Qing Tuan, as its name implies, is a kind of blue glutinous rice balls, which are produced in the south of the Yangtze River and spread radially to the south of the Yangtze River with Zhejiang as the center. The main materials are seasonal weeds, glutinous rice flour and stuffing, and the weeds collected are often mainly wormwood. Crushing wormwood into green wormwood juice, then mixing glutinous rice flour and green wormwood juice, mashing, and kneading into dough. Then add the stuffing, steam it, and brush a layer of oil before taking it out of the pot to make the Xiaoqing dumplings look shiny. The development of Qing Tuan's stuffing is also very epochal. In the past, the stuffing was red bean paste, sugar or bacon; Now, in order to keep up with the development of the times, the stuffing of the youth league has appeared fruit stuffing, blueberry flavor, strawberry flavor and even chocolate flavor.

The Legend of Tomb-Sweeping Day Eating Youth League

The legend of Youth League One:

Legend has it that one year in Tomb-Sweeping Day, Taiping Chen, the right-hand general of Li Xiucheng of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was chased by Qing soldiers, and a nearby farmer stepped forward to help, disguised Taiping Chen as a farmer and cultivated land with him. Taiping Chen was not caught, and the Qing soldiers didn't stop there, so they sent more soldiers to set up posts in the village, and everyone who left the village had to be inspected to prevent them from bringing food to Taiping Chen.

After returning home, when the farmer was considering what to take to Chen Taiping, he went out and slipped on a clump of wormwood. When he got up, he saw that his hands and knees were stained with green. He immediately took care of it, quickly picked some wormwood and went home, washed it, boiled it, squeezed it into glutinous rice flour and made it into zongzi. Then put the green jiaozi in the grass and mix with the sentry at the village entrance.

Taiping Chen ate this green ball and felt fragrant, waxy and non-sticky. After dark, he bypassed the Qing army post and returned to the base camp safely. Later, Li Xiucheng ordered the Taiping Army to learn to be a youth league to defend itself against the enemy. The custom of eating dumplings spread.

In addition, there is a legend about Tomb-Sweeping Day having a reunion dinner.

Legend of the Youth League 2:

About Tomb-Sweeping Day eating green? The custom of "Chinese Folk Literature Integration Story Volume of Jiaojiang City, Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province" records such a legend.

Once upon a time, there was a young man named Jin Lan. After his father died, he made a living by his mother spinning and weaving at home. Jin Lan was arrogant and lazy since he was a child, and even beat and scolded his mother. However, the court ordered that the land should be put to death, so he had to bite the bullet and go to work in his ancestral field.

Jin Lan happened to see a ewe nursing a lamb in the wild, and suddenly realized that she was determined to repay her mother's kindness. When his mother came to deliver food with a bamboo basket, he took the initiative to meet him. The mother mistakenly thought that she was late for the meal delivery, and her son wanted to beat her and scold her. Unable to get over it, he jumped into the pond. Jin Lan jumped into the pond at once, but only touched a board. He took the board home and put it in front of the hall. It is said that this is how the memorial tablet came from.

In memory of his mother, he picked up the weeds where his mother put the rice basket and made them into bitter cakes. The story also says that this day is a day when young people are sober and rational, so it is called Qingming. And every Qingming Festival, he will bring bitter cakes to the roadside beside the pond to worship. Later people called it going to the grave.

The moral of Tomb-Sweeping Day's reunion dinner is to commemorate his ancestors and get together.

It is common for Tomb-Sweeping Day to eat green meatballs in the south. Eating the green ball, just like its name, symbolizes reunion, but also to commemorate the ancestors and express their yearning for them. In addition, green ball is a kind of cake with rich nutritional value, which contains vitamins, dietary fiber, starch and other nutrients. If eaten in moderation, it can supplement human nutrition and improve immunity.

Practice of the Youth League

The traditional method of group training is to make green juice first, some with tender wormwood, some with wheat straw and some with vegetables. Mix the green juice with glutinous rice flour while it is hot, knead it into green dough, then choose small dough weighing about 50 or 60 grams each, flatten them one by one, wrap them with stuffing such as bean paste, and knead them into a ball, which is green meatballs. Spread a wet cloth in the cage, put in the green dough, steam in the pot for about 15 minutes until cooked, and then brush oil on the green dough. At present, in addition to the traditional green balls, there are many flavors on the market, such as Malantou, floss, egg yolk, hundred fruits, assorted vegetables, taro green balls and so on.

Precautions for eating green balls

First of all, we must control the amount of green balls. The main component of green ball is glutinous rice flour, which can be regarded as a staple food. According to different fillings, the calorie and fat content are also different. Therefore, eating green balls should not be unrestrained, but should be used as a substitute for staple food. For some green balls (such as meat floss and egg yolk green balls), because of their high fat content and high calories, they should be limited when eaten.

Secondly, there are also unsuitable people in the Youth League. Green balls are made of glutinous rice flour, and people usually eat cold dishes. Sticky glutinous rice becomes hard and hard to digest when it is cold (even harder if it is eaten with high-fat food). People with indigestion and insufficient gastric motility should control the number of green balls and eat less at a time. Because waxy food can stimulate gastric acid, green group is not suitable for people with hyperacidity and gastric ulcer. In addition, diabetics are not suitable for eating green balls. The glycemic index of glutinous rice flour is relatively high, which is worse than that of white sugar. Even without sugar, eating it is not conducive to controlling blood sugar, so diabetics should be very careful.