Text: Great White
La's daily warmth is still far away,
This year, the waxing sun is completely gone.
Invading the snow color also grass,
Leaking spring light has wicker.
Unconsciously, the Eighth Festival of Lapa has arrived, which means that the year is really coming to an end. People always say: After the eighth year, it is the year. The arrival of the Lapa Festival also brings a strong Chinese New Year flavor, lapa Festival is a very important day for Chinese, then there may be children curious "How did the Lapa Festival come about?" ”
There are many opinions about its origins, but the most widely said is that the eighth day of the first lunar month is the day when Buddhism commemorates Shakyamuni's enlightenment, so the Lapa Festival is also called the "Dharma Treasure Festival", on this day people will use grain or fruit to mix and boil to make porridge for the Buddha, which is now what we call "Lapa Porridge".
Offering Lapa Porridge can be blessed by the Buddha, so Lapa Porridge is also called "Fushou Congee", etc., and with the development of time, Lapa Festival has become one of the folk traditional festivals.
In addition to this statement, there are many folk sayings about the origin of Lapa Porridge, such as the saying that "red beans beat ghosts". When I was a child, my grandparents told us the origin of the Lapa Festival, saying that children who are prone to stroke and get sick are all the plague ghosts, but they are particularly afraid of red beans, so people eat porridge with red beans on the day of Lapa Ba to drive away the disease.
There is also a saying that it is related to the construction of the Great Wall, in ancient times, the civil workers who built the Great Wall did not have food to eat, all by their families to send, resulting in them wanting to eat a full meal for a long time, because the family had to trek thousands of mountains and rivers to reach the foot of the Great Wall, many people could not wait to starve to death. At the end of the year, some migrant workers will gather the surplus grain in their hands together to cook a pot of grain porridge, and each person will share a bowl, even if many people still starve to death.
In order to mourn the migrant workers who starved to death at the foot of the Great Wall, future generations chose to cook Lapa Porridge on the eighth day of the first lunar month every year to commemorate the people who had worked hard.
There are many sources about the Lapa Festival, the history of drinking Lapa Porridge in China has been for thousands of years, and there are many folk customs about this festival, parents and friends can take children to know more.
Drink Laba porridge
Drinking Laba porridge on the Lapa Festival is an inevitable thing to do on this day, and now people boil Lapa Porridge to gather its so-called "Eight Treasures" rice beans and fruits to boil porridge. But in fact, as early as the Song Dynasty, the main ingredients for cooking Laba porridge were seven, namely: walnuts, pine nuts, mushrooms, persimmon cakes, chestnuts, rice and beans.
These seven ingredients symbolize the "Seven Treasures" of the Buddhist family, which contain the five tastes of life, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty, so the laba porridge at that time was also called "Seven Treasures Five Flavors Porridge". Later generations of people have misinterpreted the original meaning, literally understanding that Lapa Porridge should contain eight treasures, which has evolved into the eight treasure porridge that we often drink.
Which eight kinds of rice beans and fruits are used to boil porridge, the ingredients used in various places are different, in fact, these do not matter, China is rich in land, each place presents different customs and cultures, some places like to eat sweet porridge, some places like to eat salty porridge. Perhaps the only constant is that Chinese people will cook a steaming pot of Laba porridge on this day, feeling the lively atmosphere brought by the reunion.
Vinegar soaked garlic
In addition to drinking delicious Porridge, in the north of China, people also like to soak garlic with vinegar on this day, and then the vinegar obtained is called "Lapa Vinegar". Successfully brewed Lapa Eight Vinegar is a must eat until the first day of the Chinese New Year, set aside for the new year to eat bubble dumplings.
The vinegar soaked out of garlic not only tastes good, but also is not easy to break, eat vegetarian dumplings on the first day of the first month, which means that the dumplings after dipping in lapa vinegar have a different flavor, and the new year will be colorful.
There is a saying that the vinegar soaked on this day of Lapa Ba, that garlic is no exception, the garlic that is soaked is emerald green, such garlic will also be called "Lapa Eight Garlic", northerners like to eat Lapa Eight Garlic on this day of Lapa Festival, which also has a saying.
It is said that in ancient times, "garlic" took the harmonic pronunciation "counting", and the merchants who were doing business at that time also liked to start settling the accounts of the year at the end of the year, generally starting from the eighth day of the first month of the Waxing Moon, so there was a saying: "After eating the Lapa Eight Meals, I will do the annual affairs". Eating garlic has become one of the things that must be done on this day, and it also takes the meaning of getting rid of the obscurity of the year.
Eat ice
Lapa Festival is a very interesting festival, probably because in the past, food was scarce, and people always used various gimmicks to add good color to their new year.
Because in the LapPa month, the weather in various places is relatively cold, and residents in some places will scoop a basin of water the day before the LapPa Festival and put it there, and when the Lappa Festival arrives, the water freezes into ice cubes, and people break it up and eat it, and it is said that after eating it for the second year, there will be no stomach pain throughout the year.
Eat Lapa Tofu
In China's Anhui Province, local residents have the custom of eating Lapa tofu on the day of the Lapa Festival, every household will take out the cut tofu pieces in advance, hang them up to dry and dried, and on the day of the Lapa Festival, the locals will take out the dried tofu to cook a variety of tofu delicacies to eat.
Dried tofu can be left for three months without deterioration, and even relatives can take it out to entertain guests even if they wait until the first month of the New Year.
Local customs and habits are different, and some northern regions will make delicious lapa noodles on the day of the Lapa Festival, roll out the noodles, and then accompany them with various vegetables and meats to make a bun to eat. Some southern regions also make Lapa bean on the day of Lapa Ba. What are the different customs of the Lapa Festival in your area, you can say it and listen to it.
The good conditioning of the spleen and stomach is the key to enhancing the child's resistance.
"La-la- Lapa is regarded as the coldest day and a festival that tests children's resistance. It is often said that to improve children's resistance, its essence is to strengthen the spleen.
Children with ample spleen and yang are warm on all fours. The spleen is the main limb, the spleen and yang are sufficient, the limbs are warm; and the children with insufficient spleen and yang have the limbs are not warm.
Compared with children with insufficient kidney qi, children with insufficient spleen and yang have much lighter coldness of their hands and feet, but they are more durable, that is, the cold hands and feet for a long time are not warm, especially in winter. Children are always cold hands and feet, and it is easy to catch a cold when the day is cold, which is definitely a problem of spleen deficiency.
But the cold weather is the child's digestive ability is the best time, at this time, parents should seize the opportunity to give the child a healthy spleen, and using Laba porridge to adjust the spleen is a good way.
Chinese medicine believes that the winter diet has three suitable, one should be porridge, two should be warm, three should be nuts, which are conducive to healthy spleen and stomach.
It is advisable to porridge, porridge is the most nourishing, the best for the spleen and stomach. It has both a tonic and can moisturize the gastrointestinal and oral cavity.
It should be warm and warm, in order to take the meaning of yang and yin.
Nuts, most of the nuts are high in calories, which is extremely beneficial to the kidneys. The kidney qi is sufficient, and the kidney yang is warm and warm, which is naturally conducive to the spleen and stomach to transport the water valley subtle.
Completely satisfying these three suitable diets, that is not the eight treasure porridge ~
"Eight treasure porridge" is generally based on japonica rice, glutinous rice or black glutinous rice as the main ingredient, and then add auxiliary materials, such as mung beans, red beans, lentils, white lentils, red dates, peach kernels, peanuts, lotus seeds, guiyuan, pine seed kernels, yams, lilies, goji berries, mustard fruit, coix rice and so on boiled to make porridge.
Most of them are spleen and kidney-friendly materials, which are very suitable for children to eat.
Lapa Eight arrives, it is not far from going home for the reunion year, it is this warm moment that is looking forward to all year round, "the two townships are extravagant, and a porridge is happy and far away", even if the customs of each place in Lapa are different, but they will drink a bowl of hot Lapa porridge on the day of lapa ba festival, and the customs of Lapa ba, which is full of "sense of ceremony", bring people a strong New Year's flavor.
I hope that when every child holds a bowl of Laba porridge in his hand, he can enjoy the flavor of traditional Chinese festival food and feel the heritage of traditional Chinese culture.