Every Dragon Boat Festival, it is the season when wormwood hangs doors and zongzi are fragrant. At the Dragon Boat Festival, I returned to visit my father in the residential area of Lingui District of Guilin City. From time to time, I heard a shout from the laneway connecting the vegetable market in front of the door: "Zongzi! "Five-way hair cake!"
Wrapping rice dumplings to eat rice dumplings, my hometown lingui liangjiang and wutong area of the countryside, is the qingming season only has the custom of eating rice dumplings, and now in the city, also gradually eat rice dumplings during the Dragon Boat Festival. Folk proverb: "Qingming is like a year, and rice dumplings are wrapped in rice dumplings." "Qingming rice dumplings are firmly and firmly." "Zongzi" is a harmonic sound of "many sons", which means that the family is prosperous. Dumplings wrapped during the Qingming Festival can be used as an offering to the grave and can also be used as food for stepping on the green belt. Hometown Lingui rural areas eat what to eat is very exquisite: Qingming Festival to eat rice dumplings, Dragon Boat Festival to eat rice cakes, in July and a half "ghost festival" and August 15 Mid-Autumn Festival is to eat glutinous rice made of white steamed buns, Mid-Autumn Festival also eat moon cakes, Spring Festival is to make rice cakes, Lantern Festival to eat tangyuan, family happy events on steamed pine cakes.
1, the Dragon Boat Festival, every household in front of the door hanging calamus wormwood.
First, the legend of eating rice dumplings
According to expert research, Zongzi is a folk ordinary food, and there are different theories about the custom of eating Zongzi: one is to say that the Dragon Boat Festival is to sacrifice Qu Yuan, the doctor of the Chu State to the Toujiang River, reflecting people's remembrance and remembrance of Qu Yuan, who is full of patriotic feelings; the other is to commemorate the Spring and Autumn Period of the Jin Dynasty and form a folk custom of eating Zongzi (the day before the Qingming Dynasty), the origin of which is earlier than the Dragon Boat Festival.
Many places are popular to eat Zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival. Eating zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival is now widely believed to commemorate the great patriotic poet Qu Yuan. Legend has it that in 340 BC, the patriotic poet and Chu state doctor Qu Yuan, facing the pain of subjugating the country, on May 5, sadly embraced the big stone and threw himself into the Luo River. In order not to let the fish and shrimp damage his body, the common people used bamboo tubes to pack rice into the river. Later, in order to show respect and nostalgia for Qu Yuan, every day, people would use bamboo tubes to pack rice and throw them into the river to pay tribute, which is the origin of China's earliest rice dumplings - "tube dumplings".
2, triangle dumplings, in fact, there are four corners, but people look like three corners from one side. Web pictures
There are also places to keep cold food festivals to eat rice dumplings. The Cold Food Festival is a traditional Chinese festival, 105 days after the winter solstice in the summer calendar and one or two days before the Qingming Festival. The origin of the Cold Food Festival, according to historical records: during the Spring and Autumn Period, the Prince of the Jin Dynasty exiled to other countries for nineteen years to avoid disasters, and the minister Jiezi Tui always followed left and right, never abandoned; and even "cut off the shares". Heavy ear and hard work, became a generation of famous monarchs "Jin Wengong". However, Jiezi Tui did not seek Lilu, and returned to the Hidden Mian Mountain with his mother, Jin Wengong ordered to set fire to the mountain in order to force him to go out of the mountain to meet him, and Jiezi Tui resolutely did not go out of the mountain, and finally died of fire. Jin Wengong was grateful for the aspirations of his loyal subjects, buried him in Mianshan Mountain, built a temple, and ordered that fire and cold food be banned on the day of the death of The Meson to send mourning, which is the origin of the "Cold Food Festival". With the passage of time, the Cold Food Festival has gradually integrated into the Qingming Festival, and to this day, many places are still popular with the folk customs of eating rice dumplings the day before the Qingming Dynasty.
3. Small flat rice dumplings.
2. Glutinous rice dumplings for the Qingming Festival
In my hometown, every household wraps rice dumplings the day before the Qingming Festival. This custom may be related to the traditional custom of eating rice dumplings in order to commemorate the Jin Dynasty during the Spring and Autumn Period and the formation of the folk "Cold Food Festival".
The rice dumplings in the hometown of Lingui and Liangjiang are all wrapped in relatively wide bamboo leaves and bundled with strong tough grass.
Fresh bamboo leaves are picked from the bamboo forest, washed and dried first, and used when wrapping rice dumplings. Near the Qingming Festival, there are also washed and cool bamboo leaves on the polder to sell one by one. Wrapping rice dumplings with bamboo leaves not only smells of a kind of fragrance of leaves, but also this kind of rice dumpling leaves can provide polyphenols and potassium elements, which penetrate into the rice when steaming, which is conducive to improving the anti-heat function of the human body.
4. Large flat rice dumplings and long rice dumplings. Web pictures
The grass that binds rice dumplings is a very tough grass that is cut in the mountains. In the 1970s, when I was a child in the countryside, my mother and the women in the village had to go to the deep mountains of the Yellow Mud Boundary, seven or eight miles away from our village, to cut a kind of very tough grass and come back, bundle it into a high highland and hang it on the beams of the hall house, and when the seedlings were pulled in the spring, they would take the tough grass and soak it in water, and then use this tough grass to bundle the seedlings; when the rice dumplings were wrapped during the Qingming Festival, they also used this tough grass to tie the rice dumplings. The rice dumplings tied with tough grass also have a natural fragrance like the leaves. This grass is tough and easy to tear into thin strips of silk to tie things. At that time, we didn't know what kind of grass to call it, so everyone directly called it "tough grass". Later, I learned that this kind of grass with strong toughness can bind things, called marigold grass that grows on the mountain, and called pu grass that grows on the water's edge. This tough grass is as written in the Lefu poem "Peacock Flying Southeast": "The reed is like silk, and the rock has no transfer." ”
6. Cook rice dumplings. Web pictures
A day or two before the Qingming Dynasty, every household in my hometown was soaked with glutinous rice and white rice dumplings. The raw material used is glutinous rice. First wash the glutinous rice with water two or three times and filter it dry, then put the fragrant stained gardenia water and the alkaline straw ash filtered water, and then put some red beans, mung beans, sesame seeds and the right amount of salt to mix well, and then wrap bamboo leaves and tough grass into rice dumplings. The rice dumplings in the hometown bag have triangular rice dumplings, small flat rice dumplings, cylindrical large rice dumplings and slender cylindrical long dumplings with square ends. Almost every family is wrapped in dozens of pounds of glutinous rice. The dumplings are mainly housewives, and other members of the family are also involved in the bunsing. Zongzi generally contain sesame seeds, chestnuts, etc., and some put pork belly or bacon. When I was in the countryside, my family was mainly wrapped in rice dumplings by my mother.
Every household in our village is wrapped in half a basket or even a basket of rice dumplings. After wrapping the rice dumplings during the day, at night they are put into a large iron pot with a diameter of nearly one meter and boiled, and the water should be submerged to cover the rice dumplings, otherwise the cooking will not be transparent, and if the water is boiled and evaporated, the water will continue to be added. Boiling rice dumplings often has to be boiled for one night, the water in the large iron pot is boiled, there is not much firewood, but has been slowly boiled with a few sticks of firewood, until the next day' dawn, full of a large iron pot of rice dumplings are cooked. In the hometown before the Qingming Dynasty, the villages and villages were busy cooking rice dumplings, and the households were floating rice dumplings.
7. Malian grass tied to rice dumplings. Web pictures.
Different rice dumplings in my hometown have different effects. There is a small amount of rice dumplings, which the whole family eats together, and it is also the main product of the offering on the incense case in the hall house. There are also many triangular rice dumplings, small flat rice dumplings, etc., which can be eaten as rice in a few days of the Qingming Festival, and can also be brought to the tomb as an offering. Most of the rice dumplings in the bag are long dumplings, which can be kept for a month or two. Long rice dumplings hang on the stove like bacon, and after the Qingming Dynasty, it is often the busiest season for farmers to cultivate the fields and plant seedlings, when the long rice dumplings hanging on the stove head are used to get up every morning or cut into slices or boiled in whole water, as the breakfast that the family eats before going to work. In the countryside at that time, to see if the family was living a good life, one was to see how much bacon was left on the stove before the Spring Festival, and the other was to see how many long rice dumplings were hung on the stove after the Qingming Dynasty.
After I went out to work, every year when I returned to the countryside on the Qingming Festival, my relatives in my hometown before leaving sent me a string of my own packaged triangle dumplings and small flat dumplings.
8. Bundle rice dumplings with grass. Web pictures
3. Rice cake for the Dragon Boat Festival.
Hair cake is a traditional folk food of the Dragon Boat Festival, and eating rice cake at the Dragon Boat Festival in the rural Lingui Liangjiang countryside in my hometown of Guilin also has a very long tradition like eating rice dumplings in the Qingming Dynasty.
According to research, eating hair cakes during the Dragon Boat Festival is still very historical. In history, there is a legend of eating mung bean cake during the Dragon Boat Festival to commemorate Wu Zixu, the doctor of wu in the late Spring and Autumn Period. At that time, Wu Zixu repeatedly advised Wu Wang Fuchai to kill Gou Jian, but Fu Almost did not listen, but instead gave Wu Zixu to death, and later, Fu Cha also threw Wu Zixu's body into the Qiantang River. In order to commemorate Wu Zixu, the people at that time revered him as one of the sea gods "Narcissus King", and every Dragon Boat Festival, they would prepare his favorite mung bean cake. Since then, the custom of eating mung bean cake in the Dragon Boat Festival has been passed down.
According to the analysis of the twenty-four solar terms in Chinese medicine theory, the Dragon Boat Festival is the most prosperous time of yang qi in the four seasons of the year, at this time people's mood fluctuations are relatively large, very easy to be irritable and worried. Coupled with the fact that it is summer and the temperature is gradually rising, something is especially needed to alleviate this situation at this time. The cake made of mung beans or rice has a soft taste, which is very suitable for eating at this time, which can greatly alleviate the negative impact caused by excess yang qi and can effectively dissolve dry heat and depression. Coupled with the sound of "hair cake" and "hair" and "high", there is a positive upward flying yellow Tengda meaning, for the hope of a good harvest in the year is a good wish. Therefore, eating mung bean cake or rice hair cake during the Dragon Boat Festival has been passed down from generation to generation.
9. Bamboo leaves wrapped in rice dumplings. Web pictures
Perhaps, the popular eating of rice cake in the Hometown during the Dragon Boat Festival is related to these customs and legends. Lingui is rich in rice and rarely grows mung beans, so rice hair cakes are made instead of mung bean cakes. Rice cake is made by farmers who have grown their own rice and ground it into flour with stone grinding. I remember when I was young in the countryside, every Dragon Boat Festival, my mother would soak rice, and then let me push and grind with her, grind it into rice milk, rice milk fermented with yeast, and then steamed into rice cake. Some rice cakes are made with a little sugar or brown sugar and steamed in a large iron pot. Evaporation cake and boiled rice dumplings are not the same, boiling rice dumplings is in a large iron pot full of water soaked in rice dumplings to cook, and evaporation cake is to put half a pot of water at the bottom of the large iron pot, separated by bamboo grates, put a flat-bottomed dustpan containing rice flour on the bamboo grate, steamed and then used a knife to cut the hair cake into pieces, most of which are cut into diamond-shaped squares. Some are packed in small bowls, and the shape of the cake after steaming is a bowl shape.
This kind of hair cake is very soft and delicious, and the freshly steamed rice hair cake is steaming hot, and the whole space of the house is filled with this sweet smell. If you put white sugar, the hair cake is white; if you put brown sugar, the hair cake is brown sugar color. There were small holes in the hair cake, like the sponge we see now. Kneading the hair cake by hand is very elastic.
When I was young in the countryside, my mother made rice cake every Dragon Boat Festival, and I still remember it endlessly. I remember one year during the Dragon Boat Festival, my distant cousins, Lao Ten and three of them, carried buckets and fish baskets to a pond. This pond doesn't seem to be much bigger, but it's deeper. Our three friends rose from the morning to the afternoon when the sun was about to set, exhausted, and finally each of us got more than a pound of loach. Hungry at noon, he sent me home to get the steamed hair cake of my mother on the Dragon Boat Festival to fill my hunger. After I brought the cake, everyone devoured it and said that this rice cake was the best.
The rice cake made by my mother who ate during the Dragon Boat Festival that year really felt that it was the most beautiful food in the world. Later, every time I eat hair cake, I will remember the taste of that time.
Bianche, June 26, 2020 Gengzi Dragon Boat Festival, written in Guilin
10. White sugar rice hair cake, brown sugar rice hair cake and purple potato rice hair cake. Web pictures