When you are far away from home, do you remember the creek in front of your home? The creek that runs through the village joins the river, and the river joins the river and the sea. Like you, walking in the bustling crowds, crossing the mountains and mountains, unconsciously leaving home for many years.
It's the eighth day of the first lunar month, no matter what kind of fireworks you swallow, how the years pour ink on you, this day is unforgettable in your mind is the bowl of fragrant porridge.
Qinghai Laba porridge. People's Daily Photo by Gan Haiqiong
A small bowl of porridge, with its own name, carries the thickness of traditional culture, wraps expectations for the future, condenses the warmth of family reunion, and becomes or will become the nostalgia and hometown in the memory of many people.
The flat but sturdy ice surface is a "playground" for children in the north and a processing place for wheat kernels, the most important ingredient of Qinghai Laba Porridge. A shallow pit is chiseled out of the ice, the wheat is put into it, the skin is scooped with a stone pestle, and the water is absorbed at the same time, and then the bran is sieved repeatedly with a dustpan to obtain the wheat kernels that can be cooked in the pot.
Wheat kernels, the main ingredient of laba porridge made on ice noodles. Photo by Chen Wenjin
Screening wheat kernels. Photo by Chen Wenjin
Qinghai Laba porridge main ingredient. Photo by Chen Wenjin
Walking into Yehong Village, Shangwuzhuang Town, Huangzhong District, Xining City, Qinghai Province, Lao Yuan heard the song of "Just Hum Just Like This Tamping, Just Ramming, Just Tamping, Tamping," and it turned out to be villager Zhang Yonglan and several other sisters-in-law in the villages who were scooping wheat kernels on the ice, and they were busy, and several children next to them were playing with ice carts, and the songs and laughter intertwined with the joyful atmosphere of the festival.
Children frolicking on the ice. Photo by Chen Wenjin
As soon as the curtain of the villagers' iron tree flower home was opened, the unique aroma of wheat kernels came to the nose, although the gas stove replaced the wood stove, but the food chapter dominated by wheat kernels still opened and closed freely, waiting for the wheat kernels to be cooked softly, adding pork or mutton, and then matching with green vegetables, and putting out the pot, Qinghai's Laba porridge finally bloomed in people's mouths.
Qinghai Laba porridge - wheat kernel rice out of the pot. Photo by Chen Wenjin
The fourth generation was in the same room, and the grandfather kept saying "Delicious!", and the children on the side ate a bowl of porridge one bite at a time. On an ordinary but special day, the warmth of home slowly ripples between the aromas.
"Count nine cold days, cold in three nines." Lapa Festival is the coldest few days of the year, in the past, people took water from ice to cook Laba porridge, and also specially took ice to take back "offering ice" to pray for smooth wind and rain and abundant grain in the coming year.
The family spent lapa eight together. Photo by Chen Wenjin
For nature, human beings are always in awe, even in the next year to plant anything to "look at the ice".
"The older generation looked at the pattern on the ice and thought it would indicate the harvest in the field in the coming year. If the bubble inside the ice is large, the potato is good, the small one is rapeseed, the long strip is wheat, and the round and small is bean. "In this way, the god of nature came to the earth, and in the long years, he mixed up good expectations and romance.
Looking at the traditional Chinese festivals, they all embody the history of national development, the essence of humanistic concepts, the genes of traditional virtues, and the strength of development. "After the LapPa is the year", a thousand years of precipitation, the Lapa Festival has long become the prelude to the Qinghai people's New Year's Overture, as a traditional festival, it is a treasure of Chinese culture, a link from customs to emotions, and an unchangeable feeling of home and country in your and my heart.