The Opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics in the Spring Festival Hides the "Chinese Romance" of the Heluo Region

On the 4th, the Spring Festival, on this day of spring and hope, the 24th Winter Olympic Games will open in Beijing, the world's first "city of double Olympics". Why was the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics chosen on the day of Lichun? What is the special meaning? The reporter interviewed Liu Bailing, director of the Chinese Folklore Society and a famous folklorist in Luoyang.

Liu Bailing introduced that Lichun is the first of the twenty-four solar terms, and it is also a poetic and romantic solar term, which means that a new reincarnation has begun. The Spring Festival, the covenant of ice and snow, as promised, is a very good omen. The meaning of spring and the slogan of the Winter Olympics "Together to the Future" are perfectly integrated, and the Chinese culture and world civilization will play the music of spring together, so that Chinese traditional culture can shine on the stage of the Winter Olympics, so that the world can better understand China and understand China.

The Yellow River Basin is the birthplace of Chinese civilization, the 24 solar terms are a tool to reflect climate and phenological changes, master the agricultural seasons, and guide and influence people's production and life for thousands of years, and the Heluo region centered on Luoyang is an important birthplace and practice of this masterpiece of intangible cultural heritage of mankind.

Liu Bailing said that Lichun is the most abundant custom among the twenty-four solar terms. In ancient times, Lichun was an important national festival, and successive dynasties attached great importance to the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival ceremony held on this day is an important agricultural ceremony, which has continued in China for nearly two thousand years.

In Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty, a new ceremony appeared, called the Lichun Greeting Ceremony. The emperor and the civil and military officials came to the eastern suburbs on the day of the spring to sacrifice the Qing Emperor and Jurmang, and everyone wore green clothes and sacrificed on the altar. This is because spring represents the East in the Five Elements Doctrine, is a wood, and the color is blue.

After the ceremony, the spring cattle are beaten with multicolored sticks, called "fighting spring", which is a very important part of the spring ceremony of "giving soil cattle and cultivating people outside the door". These native cattle, which stand outside the city in the spring, should be retained until the summer. The earth cow as a symbol of spring should be retained for a whole spring.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, some people ran to Luoyang City to watch the ceremony of beating spring cattle. At the ceremony site, a "spring cow" was placed with bamboo straw tied into a skeleton, pasted with colored paper on the outside, and filled with walnuts and peanuts inside, waiting for government officials to come to the scene to operate. Ordinary people call the official who presides over the ceremony of beating the spring cow "spring official".

However, in later generations, beating spring cattle is not whipping real cows, but paper cows made of colored paper paste, which are filled with walnuts, peanuts, candy, etc. The people are eagerly awaiting, and when the officials who beat spring cattle break the spring cows, everyone rushes to pick them up. Now Luoyang folk call Lichun "Fighting Spring", which is derived from this.

Spring cakes and lettuce are eaten on spring days, called spring plates. Li Shizhen wrote in the "Compendium of Materia Medica": "Five spices are new year's day Spring, with green onions, garlic, leeks, liǎo, artemisia, mustard and tender vegetables, miscellaneous and edible, taking the meaning of welcoming the new, called the five spice plates." ”

Du Fu's poem "Li Chun" says: "Spring on a spring plate with fine lettuce, suddenly recalling the heyday of the two capitals." "The spring plate has lettuce and shredded radish, and continues the tradition of eating them in pancake rolls. In Su Dongpo's poem, it is written that the main dish of the spring plate is artemisia annua and yellow leek. The spring plates of each era are slightly different, but lettuce, radish shreds, and leeks are generally the main vegetables in the spring plates.

In addition, in ancient Times, Luoyang folk also had many spring customs, such as sticking spring posts, drinking spring tea, wearing spring chicken, and tying up spring radishes. On the day of spring in suburban villages, both adults and children must eat a few bites of radish, commonly known as "biting spring", with the meaning of "biting the grass roots, then everything can be done".

Tomorrow, let's look forward to the feast that integrates the ice and snow Olympic culture and traditional Chinese culture, and feel the difference of this Lichun together! (Luo Bao Rong Media Luoyang Network reporter Tong Jingjing text/photo)