"Children, children, don't be hungry, after the eighth year is the year."
When I was a child, I began to look forward to the New Year when I entered the Waxing Moon, and "wearing new clothes, setting off firecrackers, and eating well" was the reason why the children looked forward to the New Year, at which time the adults taught the children to sing this children's song.
Lap 8 is the prelude to the New Year, Lapa 8 arrived, will the year be far away? After lap 8, the prelude to the New Year was opened: sweeping the house, steaming steamed steamed buns, preparing New Year goods...
On this day, everyone knows that they are going to drink Lapa Porridge. But who knows why you should drink Laba porridge? What is the origin of the Rakshasa Festival?
The Lapa Festival is a traditional Festival in China, and since it is a tradition, it is related to China's ancient culture, and of course there will certainly be many interesting stories.
01
Lapa Festival and Lapa Porridge
The Lapa Festival, the earliest day of sacrifice, is called lapa festival, Lari festival, and princely la.
The Han Dynasty's "Customs and Rituals" records: "Lapa, pick up." The new and the old are handed over, so the great sacrifice is also repaid. "In the season when the old and the new are alternated, sacrifices are held to repay the protection of the gods, and prayers are made for the coming year to be smooth, the grain is abundant, and the people of Guotai are safe.
In ancient times, "la" was the same as "hunting", "la sacrifice" was also called "hunting sacrifice", "field hunting fun animals and animals, in order to sacrifice their ancestors also." ”
"Wax" is from "meat", which is the winter festival with "meat".
"Waxers, chase the epidemic to welcome the spring", winter will be exhausted in the future, the weather will gradually warm, and all kinds of "epidemic gas" will slowly dissipate.
In the pre-Qin period, there was a custom of waxing in the december of the end of the year, but the "wax day" at that time was not fixed, and the name was different.
Xia called the Lari festival "Jiaping", shang "Qing Qi", Zhou Yue "big wax", and the Han Dynasty changed it to "la".
In the Han Dynasty, in addition to the sacrifices, people also came as a festival, and there were rest, reunions, feasts and other activities. In addition, in order to show the clarity and leniency of political affairs, the imperial court would also let some prisoners go home on parole for the holidays.
It was not until the Southern and Northern Dynasties that people fixed the day of the Waxing Day, and Zong Yi's "Records of the Jingchu Years" said: "December 8 is the Waxing Day", and since then the eighth day of the first lunar month has gradually become a fixed festival of sacrifice and has been passed down to this day.
There is also a day called "Buddha Enlightenment Day", also known as "Dharma Treasure Festival", which is a major festival of Buddhism.
As we all know, Buddhism is not a native religion, so how is the traditional Chinese Lapa Festival associated with Buddhism?
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, Buddhism was introduced to China and flourished, and many Buddhists who came to China to preach found that the Lapa Festival in China was actually a day away from the enlightenment day of Buddha Shakyamuni.
Legend has it that Shakyamuni meditated under the Bodhi tree and did not eat or drink for six years, and finally fainted. A shepherd girl milked goat's milk and mixed grains and wild fruits into a chyle porridge for him to eat.
When Shakyamuni woke up and continued his practice, he meditated under the Bodhi tree for 48 days, without drinking or eating, without saying a word, without moving, meditating until the seventh day of the first lunar month.
The Buddhist scriptures say: "On this night, the sky was clear and the wind was gentle. Siddhartha sat silently on the Vajrapani throne, manifested various realms of meditation, looked through the immeasurable worlds of the ten directions and all things in past, present, and future, and gained insight into the cause and effect of the three realms. ”
In the early morning of the eighth day of the first lunar month, a vision appeared in the sky, and Shakyamuni suddenly realized that he had attained the supreme path and finally achieved positive results.
Later, on this day, Buddhists boiled the grains and grains from the four squares into porridge, called "Seven Treasures and Five Flavors Of Porridge", and gave them to the faithful to drink as a souvenir.
In order to better promote Buddhism in China, the missionaries declared that the Chinese Lapa Festival Day and the "Buddha Enlightenment Day" were one day, so they combined a "Lapa Festival".
However, at that time, the porridge was not called "Lapa Porridge", and the name of Lapa Porridge began in the Song Dynasty. Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Dream Record" records: "On that day, the great temples held a Buddhist bathing meeting, and sent the Seven Treasures Five Flavor Porridge and disciples, called Lapa Eight Porridge. The people of the capital also eat porridge from fruit and miscellaneous ingredients. ”
The late Song Dynasty's meticulousness also recorded the practice of Laba porridge in his "Past Affairs of Wulin": "The porridge made of walnuts, pine nuts, milk mushrooms, plums, chestnuts, etc. is Lapa Porridge. ”
In the Qing Dynasty's "Records of the Yanjing Dynasty", the materials for making Lapa Porridge are more detailed and more detailed: "Lapa Porridge is boiled with yellow rice, white rice, jiang rice, millet, diamond horn rice, chestnuts, peeled date paste, etc., and boiled with water, and externally dyed red peach kernels, almonds, melon seeds, peanuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts and white sugar, brown sugar, and trivial grapes for dot dyeing." ”
As Mr. Lao She said: "There are all kinds of beans in the porridge, like a small agricultural exhibition." ”
The Qing Dynasty court boiled five pots of "Seven Treasures Porridge" in the Lama Temple every time Lapa Ba, the first pot of porridge was put into a bowl and enshrined in front of the statues of the former emperor and the Buddha statues in various halls, the second pot of porridge was presented to the imperial court by the lama, the third pot was given to the princes and the great lama, the fourth pot was given to the civil and military officials, the fifth pot was given to the monks of the monastery, and the remaining pots of the third to fifth pots were mixed together to give alms to the people.
To this day, there are still many old neighborhoods in Beijing every year, waiting in line for the Lapa Porridge distributed by the Lama Temple to beg for good luck.
Of course, since the Lapa Festival is our traditional festival, it will not be without local legends and stories, and the Laba Porridge is also related to Yue Fei and Zhu Yuanzhang.
Legend has it that in that year, Yue Fei led his troops to resist Jin in Zhuxian Town, and it was the middle of the severe winter of the ninth month, the Yue family army was poorly clothed, hungry and frozen, and the people sent porridge one after another, and the Yue family army ate a meal of "thousand family porridge" sent by the people, and the result was a big victory.
It was the eighth day of the first month of December. After Yue Fei's death, in order to commemorate him, every eighth day of the first lunar month, the people cooked porridge with mixed grains and beans, which slowly became a custom.
Zhu Yuanzhang was born into poverty, it is not easy to fight the world, many food legends are related to him, and Laba Porridge is no exception.
It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang was imprisoned in the cold winter moon, cold and hungry. On this day, Zhu Yuanzhang found a rat hole, and actually took out seven or eight kinds of miscellaneous grains and dried fruits such as red beans, rice, and red dates from it, and Zhu Yuanzhang boiled these things into porridge (it is very strange that the prison actually prepared a pot stove and a fire sickle and firewood for him).
This day happened to be the eighth day of the first month, so he called this pot of mixed grain porridge "Lapa Porridge". When he calmed the world and became emperor, in order to commemorate the suffering he had suffered, he set this day as the "Lapa Festival".
There are also legends that eating Laba porridge is to use the red beans inside to "fight ghosts", and there is also a legend that when Qin Shi Huang built the Great Wall, the laborers had no food to eat, and on the day of Lapa Ba, they collected their remaining grain and boiled it into porridge and ate it separately. In order to commemorate them, later people cooked lapa porridge on this day every year.
No matter how much credibility the legend has, cook a bowl of fragrant, sweet silk, hot lapa porridge to eat on the cold day of Lapa Ba, there will always be warmth from the bottom of the heart, and there will be hope for life in the coming year.
02
Other customs of the Rakshasa Festival
In addition to boiling Lapa Porridge, there are various customs about "eating".
In the north, noodles are the mainstay, especially in the Guanzhong region of Shaanxi Province, and Lapa Ba does not cook Lapa Porridge on this day, but boils Lapa Ba noodles. After the noodles are cooked, a variety of fruits and vegetables and condiments are added, and the whole family sits around and eats a bowl of lapa noodles to warm up and survive the cold winter.
Pickled eight garlic is mainly popular in the north of China and Shandong. On this day, the purple-skinned garlic prepared earlier is peeled and marinated in vinegar. The pickled garlic is as green as emerald, or Lao She said: "Vinegar also has some spicy taste, color and taste are beautiful, so that people have to eat more dumplings." ”
In the southern Anhui region, there is the custom of bashaba tofu, which is made of soybeans, peppers, spices and other raw materials refined by traditional handicrafts, and is known as "vegetarian ham". The finished product is yellow and moist like jade, soft in the mouth, salty with sweetness, fragrant and fresh.
There is also a beautiful legend about Lapa Tofu: during the Ming and Qing dynasties, Hui merchants went out to do business, and general food was not easy to preserve. The wife of a merchant used pickling and drying to make tofu for her husband as food for the journey.
The merchant thanked his wife and called it "Wife Tofu", and others followed suit, because the local dialect "Wife" and "Lapa Ba" are very similar, and over time it is called "Lapa Tofu".
As the saying goes, "If you can't succeed in the next year, first look at Lapa Bing". Early in the morning, people have to go to the river to smash ice and go home, called "Lapa Ice". Whoever gets up early and hits the ice first has better luck.
The day before Lapa Ba, the water was scooped into a basin to freeze, and when it came to lapa Ba, the ice was taken out of the basin and crushed and eaten. It is said that after eating the ice on this day, you will not have stomach pain for the next year.
Regarding Lapa Ba, in the past, some areas in the north would choose this day to get married and hold weddings, and there was a song and ballad: "Lapa Lapa eight days are good, how many aunts change sisters-in-law." ”
In the past, the people called the Waxing Moon "Jila Moon", and the eighth day of the first lunar month was the most festive and auspicious day, and people chose this day to do happy events to show auspicious celebrations.
There are also some places, this day boiled Lapa porridge, not only people drink, but also let the flowers and trees also drink, it is said that the trees that watered Lapa Porridge, the next year not only leafy, fruit trees do not dare to stop branches.
Every traditional festival has a rich cultural connotation and a legend of beautiful meaning, and the Lapa Festival has changed from an ancient sacrifice activity to an auspicious festival for our ordinary people, and what remains unchanged is the pursuit of a better life.
Today, may we all drink a bowl of sweet and delicious porridge, in 2021, everything "porridge" is complete.