Youth League: A millennium covenant with spring

Source: Beijing Daily

Zhang Hui

Although becoming an Internet celebrity food is only a matter of recent years, the history of the Youth League can be traced back more than a thousand years. It originated from the Cold Food Festival, arose from the Qingming Festival, and has undergone a transformation from cold food to sacrifice to seasonal goods.

Eating the youth group is the same as remembering the ancestors and going on an outing, which is the traditional custom of the Qingming Festival. The history of the Youth League for more than a thousand years means that these traditional customs have also been repeated more than a thousand times by generations, and the memory of the tip of the tongue conveys the beautiful expectations for the spring of the new year from generation to generation.

1. The green and white dumplings of the Cold Food Festival

Which "poet" in the gastronomic world was the first to take off a touch of green in the spring and integrate it into the rice dough to create the green dough? History is no longer possible, and there are many theories about the origin of the food of the Youth League.

Some people think that the predecessor of the Qingtuan was the "powder dough" or "water dough" of the Tang and Song dynasties: "the powder dough" comes from the Tang Dynasty Dragon Boat Festival, the palace's popular holiday snacks, "Shi Guangji" is recorded: "In the Tang Palace, every Dragon Boat Festival made powder dough, horns and bread in the gold plate, delicate and lovely." Shoot an arrow with a small horned bow frame, and the one who hits the powder ball will get food. And the "water ball" according to the Song Dynasty Wu Zimu's "Mengliang Record" notes, the practice is "straw powder wrapped sugar, fragrant soup bath" - in fact, it is tangyuan. However, whether it is a powder dough or a water dough, the method and the season of eating are quite different from the green dough, so the mainstream view is more inclined to the origin of the "green and white dough". According to the explanation of Lang Ying's "Seven Revision Drafts" of the Ming Dynasty: "The ancients ate cold food and collected Yang Tong leaves to dye rice and blue to sacrifice, and Ziyang Qi was also transformed into a green and white dumpling, which is this righteous ear." ”

The Seven Revision Drafts point out two issues regarding the origin of the Youth League. The first is the small food of Qingtuan, which was born in the "Cold Food Festival", one of the representatives of China's food culture; the second is the predecessor of Qingtuan, which is the origin of its blue color, and also comes from the food of the Cold Food Festival - Qingjing Rice.

According to legend, the Cold Food Festival was born in the Spring and Autumn Period more than 2,800 years ago, in the era of war and chaos, the Prince of jin left his hometown and was displaced for nineteen years, and the minister Jiezi pushed from beginning to end, until fu zuo zhong'er became a generation of famous princes and jin wengong. After the "achievement", the meson, who was indifferent to fame and fortune, insisted on "retiring", and took his old mother to live in seclusion in Mianshan and did not eat Junlu. Jin Wengong repeatedly asked him to come out of the mountain, so he came up with a dirty idea to set fire to the mountain and push the meson out. Who knew that Mezi Tui would rather be burned to death than refuse to go out of the mountain. The Jin Wengong, who had lost his courtiers, regretted it and ordered that on the day of the sacrifice of the son and his mother, that is, on the 105th day after the winter solstice of each year, the fire was forbidden to be used to show remembrance, which was the origin of the Cold Food Festival.

The Cold Food Festival is also called the Non-Smoking Festival, the Cold Festival, the Hundred and Five Festivals, and the Fire Prohibition Festival, and its origin is not only the "Mezi Push Commemoration Theory", but also the "Change the Fire Theory". The custom of changing fires goes all the way back to ancient times, when the fire is high in the early spring, so people extinguish the fires preserved in the previous year, that is, "forbidden fires"; and then re-drill new fires as the starting point of the new year, that is, "change fire" or "change fire". There is a three- to seven-day interval between "fire ban" and "fire change", during which there is no fire available, and people must prepare food in advance, usually living cold food, so there is a "cold food festival". The "Zhou Li" has the stipulation that "in the middle of the country is forbidden to follow the fire with a wooden dove in mid-spring"; during the Tang and Song Cold Food Festivals, there was a custom of giving fire and taking fire in the palace; folk readers also popularized the custom of asking for new fires and lamps from neighbors after the cold food festival was cut off. ”

What do you eat for cold food that can't be used as a fire to save energy? Before the Tang Dynasty, the cold food festival food did not have the saying of Qingtuan, and the most common cold food was porridge and rice. Bai Juyi's poem "Leave the dumplings and cold porridge, and cook new tea by fire", and the "Jingchu Chronicle" records that "one hundred and five days to the winter festival, that is, there is wind and rain, which is called cold food." Forbidden fire for three days, make barley porridge", which refers to the "cold porridge" that is cooked thicker and then eaten cold for several days. Rich people eat "lime cheese", that is, glutinous rice cheese, wheat cheese and almond porridge and other foods that can be prepared in advance. The Southern Song Dynasty's "Chronicle of the Ages" records another food of the Cold Food Festival, "Qingjing Rice": "Yang Tong leaves, fine holly, and the aquatic people Are Youmao." When people meet cold food, they collect their leaves to dye rice, which is blue and light, and the food is yang. It is called Yang Tong rice, Taoist called Qingjing rice, stone hunger rice. ”

This kind of glutinous rice dyed with grass leaves was widely known in the Tang Dynasty, and the tortoise has a poem: "The old smell of fragrant gold immortal food, now see the green essence jade axe meal." In addition to Taoism, Buddhism also has considerable respect for Qingjing rice, and in the Tang Dynasty, Qingjing rice was eaten every time the Buddha Bath Festival was held. Comparing the preparation methods of Qingjing Rice and Qingtuan, considering the popularity of Qingjing Rice at that time, and the function of Qingjing Rice as a cold food for cold food festivals, it can be speculated that the emergence of Qingjing Rice was inspired by Qingjing Rice. Gao Lian of the Ming Dynasty also believed in the "Eight Notes of Zunsheng" that qingtuan was born on the basis of qingjing rice: "With Yangtong leaves, and fine leaves, holly leaves, in the case of cold food, pick their leaves to dye rice, color green and light, food of Ziyang Qi, Taoists call Qingjing dry food." Nowadays, it is customary to mash the juice with wheat grass, make green flour balls with glutinous rice, and dye black rice with ubulus leaves as cakes. ”

Wormwood

2. Qingming Fruit of the Qingming Festival

Qingming, the fifth of the twenty-four solar terms, was formed around the Time of the Han Dynasty, which originally meant "all things grow at this time, all are clean and clear." The date of the Qingming Festival is on the third day after the Cold Food Festival. The close connection in time dooms the two festivals to be inseparable. According to the Book of later Han and the Biography of Zhou Ju, the cold food festival in the Han Dynasty lasted for one month, and was changed to three days in the Jin Dynasty. Whether it is three days or a month, the time covers the Qingming, so the custom of going to Qingqing and worshipping ancestors during the Qingming Festival is naturally formed, and it is natural to take the Green Tuan that the Cold Food Festival enjoys itself and sacrifice it during the Qingming Festival. In the Tang Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival and the Qingming Festival simply merged together and became the legal "small long holiday" - in 736 AD, Tang Xuanzong declared "cold food and four days of Qingming as a holiday"; in 777 AD, tang Dynasty Emperor Decree, Tang Dynasty Yamen "cold food through Qingming, five days off"; in 790 AD, Tang Dezong to Zhenyuan six years, this "small long holiday" holiday was directly added to seven days.

At the beginning, the Cold Food Festival was a big day for banning fire and welcoming new fires and national sacrifices, and Qingming was just an ordinary festival, only because it was connected to the Cold Food Festival, and it also had the function of sacrifice. According to the Records of Dreams, during the Qingming Festival in the Song Dynasty, "officials and scholars went out of the suburbs to respect the times." In the Yuan Dynasty, a core element of the Cold Food Festival, the custom of banning fire and changing fire was banned by the government, and the Cold Food Festival lost its meaning of existence, and the importance of the Qingming Festival was highlighted.

By the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Qingming Festival had officially become an independent festival, so that the people "only know the Qingming, do not know the cold food". However, although the customs of forbidding fire and giving fire to the Cold Food Festival have basically disappeared, one of the food customs of the Cold Food Festival, "Qingbai Dumplings", has been transformed into "Qingming Fruit" and has been completely inherited. With the advantage of "being able to prepare in advance and keep cold food for several days", qingtuan has become an essential sacrifice for the Qingming Festival. The Qing Dynasty "Qing Jia Lu" has: "The city sells qingtuan ripe lotus, which is a product of the ancestors, and can be eaten cold"; the Qing Dynasty scholar Xu Dayuan's "Wumen Bamboo Branch Words" also said: "According to legend, one hundred and five non-smoking kitchens are said, and the red lotus root green groups are sacrificed first.".

Judging from historical records, from the middle and late Ming Dynasty, qingtuan has been popular in the Jiangnan region, according to the Ming Wanli "Hangzhou Fu" record: "Qingming, the eaves are planted with willow branches, also worn on the head ... Guo guo swept the tomb, hung on the tomb tree with paper money, and his rice ate green dumplings. The Qing Dynasty food critic Yuan Ming described Qingtuan in the "Suiyuan Food List" as follows: "Green cakes, green dough, mashed grass for juice, and powder as powder, the color is like jasper." Due to the harmonic sounds of "Qingming" and "smart", during the Ming and Qing dynasties, holding young children to walk the streets and alleys, and neighbors exchanging "Qingming dumplings" also became a new folk custom in Jiangnan. And because of the popularity of the Qingming season to take the green group picnic, and the northerners eat spring cake "bite spring" similarly, Jiangnan people call the first bite of spring green balls "taste spring". As for why the youth league can become the common spring seasonal flavor of Jiangnan, it is due to the unique raw material conditions in the Jiangnan area.

In Jiangnan, the hometown of fish and rice, glutinous rice is rich in varieties and high yields, and the rice food culture is developed. The main ingredients of tangyuan, glutinous rice cake, glutinous rice root and green dough are glutinous rice. The texture of the sticky dough depends largely on the quality of the glutinous rice used. On the other hand, during the Qingming Dynasty, all kinds of seasonal wild vegetables have broken through the ground and overflowed with fragrance. The sage grass that is active in southern Zhejiang and the wormwood that grows in southern Jiangsu and southern Anhui are the sources of green wild fairy qi in Qingtuan. People harvest the turquoise plants, wash, blanch, drain, boil, add alkali powder, pass cold water and other processes, and then repeatedly rub the turquoise pulp juice with the rice flour from the shelling, and finally wrap in sweet filling, steamed on the drawer - the new year's green dough is baked.

After that, the Youth League went out of Jiangnan and occupied most of the southern region in the flow of years, becoming the common expectation of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Anhui and other places in the spring. Different regions of the Youth League have different variations and names: in Shanghai and Suzhou, people still call it "Qingtuan"; Nanjing people call it "Spring Tuan" or "Qingming Tuan"; when they arrive in Ningbo, the locals call it "Qingma Dumpling"; in Wenzhou, they are affectionately called "Qingming Cake"; some regions call it "Qing Ming Cake"; some regions call it "Qing Ming Cake", such as Chengdu's "Ye Er", and Anhui's "Artemisia Dumpling"; in addition, there are "Amy Fruit" in the Jiangxi population, "Qingming Dumpling" in Shaoxing...

3. Internet celebrity food in the Internet era

Spring is coming, what is the hottest food in the circle of friends? As soon as the youth group appears, it can occupy the center of the "stage". Especially in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai regions, there are always long queues in front of pastry shops, and some famous shops are even "hard to find". People wait patiently, just to carry two small bags of freshly made green dough home, brew a pot of new spring tea, and then solemnly invite these turquoise dumplings to taste. Most likely, they will also take pictures of the youth group and upload it to the circle of friends, and announce it beautifully: "Taste the taste of spring." ”

Qingtuan has become an Internet celebrity food, relying on two major elements: dazzling appearance and topicality. The former comes from the rounded figure of the green group and a strong spring blue coat. The green color and grass aroma of the green dough are like grass warblers flying for people living in the city, carrying the unique breath of spring. Even in the massive internet picture dissemination, the pictures of the Youth League are also extremely recognizable and beautiful, commonly known as "easy to produce films".

Another major element, topicality, is also the innate strength of the Youth League. Solar terms are the aesthetics of time in China, and diet once followed the aesthetic tradition of "not eating from time to time" with the solar terms. However, under the joint action of emerging cultivation technology and cold chain logistics, many fruits and vegetables can be bought all year round, although convenient, but therefore less excitement once a year and one period. Only the youth group is a rare seasonal limited food. Only the Qingtuan before and after the Qingming Dynasty can get the moisture of wormwood and have the freshest taste; and the spring light in Jiangnan is short, and the time to enjoy the Qingtuan is only a few days. The freshly made green dough cannot stand for a long time, and when it is bought, it must be shared with the family as soon as possible to have a good taste. The seasonal limit makes people look forward to this "date with spring".

There is a face value, a topic, and a connotation. The new flavor of the green dough filling added a "fire" to the green dough. At the beginning, most of the fillings are red bean paste or white sugar black sesame fillings, which match the freshness of wormwood with a sweet and soft taste. However, when the chef of a long-established hotel in Shanghai had a sudden idea and wrapped the egg yolk meat pine filling into the glutinous rice dumplings, people found that the taste of the original green dough still had unlimited possibilities. The fresh aroma of pork pine and the grease of egg yolk ripple together with the spring meaning of Qingtuan - egg yolk meat pine green dough inadvertently sends the green dough into the new year: the local characteristics of the orchid head green dough, spring shoot green dough, cabbage fresh meat green dough; the fruit of the strawberry green dough, mango green dough, durian green dough; the salty green dough in the beef green dough, pickled fresh green dough, crab powder green dough, and even bullfrog green dough, spicy hot pot green dough... No matter what the filling, when you encounter the freshness of the grass and the softness of the glutinous rice flour, you will be immersed in it and find diners who like it.

In the past, qingtuan was the seasonal food of Jiangnan spring, before the qingtuan had not yet become a popular food, northerners wanted to eat qingtuan, and could only rely on warm-hearted southern friends to bring some fresh qingtuan when they came to visit in the spring. In addition to counting on friends in the south, some people choose to do it themselves and have enough food and clothing. Without wormwood, spinach leaf juice is used instead of dyeing. Northern wormwood grows less, and many people do not like the taste of wormwood, so there are green dough made of various vegetables, whether in terms of nutrition or taste, it is not worse than wormwood.

However, when the youth league became an internet celebrity food, online shopping made it more convenient to eat the green group. Whether it is Suzhou, Shanghai, or Nanjing's Qingtuan store, as long as the online store is opened, all kinds of flavors of Qingtuan can be purchased online, and it can be reached as soon as the next day. There are also fans of Qingtuan who pursue fresh taste, and will choose to queue up in the store to buy freshly made Qingtuan. From the south to the north, chain convenience stores, long-established pastry shops, and even Beijing roast duck shops in northern cities will also launch homemade Qingtuan during the Qingming Festival.

The filling of the Youth League and the way to obtain the Youth League are unpredictable, but what remains unchanged is the spring covenant between the Chinese people who have inherited the millennium and the Youth League. After a thousand years, the Youth League has not only not declined, but has become more and more "red".

In the south of China, the Qingming Festival has the custom of buying and eating youth dumplings.

Exotic customs

Japanese straw cake

Japanese straw cake is derived from The Green Ball

Washoko is a general term for Japanese sweets, which belongs to the cake technique of Japanese tea ceremony culture, and gradually entered the life of the Japanese people from the sacrifice and aristocratic diet. The beauty of washiko has a strong seasonal imprint, but the origin of washiko comes from China. The Japanese envoys sent the Tang Dynasty people to bring the tea drinking habits and food culture of the Tang Dynasty back to Japan, so heguozi is also known as "Tang guozi", and many prototypes can be found in Chinese pastries, for example, japan's spring and fruit - grass cakes, which originated from China's green dough.

Unlike the Chinese "cake" made with wheat flour, the Japanese word for "cake" usually refers to steamed and mashed rice. The so-called grass cake is a mochi made of glutinous rice dumplings, wrapped in red bean filling; the green color in the grass cake comes from spring herbs such as wormwood leaves and koji grass, with a faint grass aroma - the method and process are the same as the "green dough", and it looks very similar.

Similar to the sacrificial function of the green dough, Japanese green cakes have also been used as sacrifices. In Japan's "Imperial Shrine Ceremony Account", there is a record of "March routine, March Festival, new grass cake as a offering". March 3rd is also Japan's Daughter's Day, and like eating a green ball to symbolize the bite of spring, the grass cake has also become a waka fruit representing spring.

Seasonal wines

Except for the Youth League

What else did Qingming eat

During the Cold Food Festival of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, a kind of almond porridge made of maltose was popular in the folk, called lime cheese; the "Qi Min Zhi Shu" of the Southern and Northern Dynasties recorded a kind of cold utensils for ring cakes, which were fried after mixing water and noodles with honey - these snacks were naturally naturally made and tasted in the Qingming Festival that appeared later. If you go back to the Song Dynasty, you are likely to buy wheat cakes and milk cakes that are convenient to preserve and carry in the street market of the Qingming Festival. Children sitting at the threshold of their home may hold a swallow-shaped pasta in their hand, either steamed or fried in oil. This swallow-shaped pasta has a unique name called Jujube Flying Swallow, which is said to be a folk sacrifice to commemorate the meson push. In the "Tokyo Dream Hualu Qingming Festival", it is recorded that during the Qingming Festival, the ordinary Kyoshi takes the 15th day after the winter solstice as the big cold food, and the previous day is called "cooking", using noodles to make dates and flying swallows, wicker strings, and inserted in the lintel, called "Zi Tui Yan".

Also used to commemorate the food of the meson push is the sub-push bun. The shape of the zi push bun resembles the helmet of an ancient warrior. The steamed bun is wrapped in eggs or dates, and it has a top with veneer flowers on all sides. The shapes of the flowers are varied, including swallows, insects, snakes, rabbits or the four treasures of the study room. People used pear branches or fine twine to string up the noodle flowers and hang them on the top of the cave to dry, which can be preserved for a long time. The food of these cold food festivals is also like the green dough, and later gradually becomes the food of the Qingming Festival.

The Qingming Festival in southern Fujian is popular to eat spring cakes, also known as "run cake dish". In Quanzhou and Xiamen, it is popular to use flour as raw material to rub and bake into a thin skin, rolled with carrot shreds, shredded meat, oyster frying, coriander and other main ingredients of the "spring cake". The Qingming Festival in eastern Fujian has the custom of eating mustard greens, especially the "mustard rice" mixed with mustard and rice.