Rural New Year customs
The family lives in Shaxi. As soon as I entered the Waxing Moon, I thought that the New Year was coming. Elderly people and children have the same mind, always looking forward to one festival after another, and sending away one festival after another, so that children grow up and the old people are older.
When people are old, they remember the previous things clearly, and the recent events are a bit confusing. When I was a child, the New Year's Eve scene, the trance like a dream that was about to fade took place in my heart again, but it still felt like something was missing. There is a large blue stone strip seven feet long and one foot wide at the door, which does not know the age, no matter spring, summer, autumn or winter, every afternoon can attract several women of seventy and eighty to gather and chat. In order to fill the incompleteness of the New Year's memory in my heart, I specially guided them to relive the New Year's customs when they were young, and at night, they actually had a dream.
Mother was busy until the afternoon, and before Chinese New Year's Eve meal, she put a lotus root and a piece of powder sausage in a large plate. After setting it up, I cut the chicken in half obliquely and sent me to my grandmother, which was an annual gift for my grandmother. After eating Chinese New Year's Eve meal, put the unmade fish and leave it for tomorrow to eat, called "pressing the year", which means more than enough every year. My father told me to put a steady ladder and paste five pieces of "Profit is Money" on the top of the gate, and my mother put two big red oranges and a letter of Profit on each bed, even on the rice cake, and then sent a red envelope to the children one by one as pressure money: "Tomorrow I am one year older, obedient." Press the old money to sleep in the pocket of the body, tomorrow all the things do not pour out, tonight bath and tomorrow brush teeth and face wash water are poured in the bucket, can not move the broom, can not move the knife, including scissors, now go to bed early, tomorrow get up early to help me fry the heap ah. ”
As the saying goes, "Chinese New Year's Eve up five more", as if just closing the eyes to the sound of one after another cannonball explosion woke up, that is the sound of others getting up early to open the door, and with the sound of the cannon fighting, there is a bunch of chaotic footsteps, it is a bunch of children sending "open the door". My mother got up early, got up a frying pan, kneaded a large ball of rice flour according to the ratio (glutinous rice sticky rice in a certain proportion), and fried it in a frying heap.
Just as the so-called "fried heap, gold and silver full of houses", everyone has to blow up a pile during the New Year. Zhongshan popular is the hollow frying pile, only to see the mother from the large ball of rice flour pinched out a small piece, rubbed round on the sesame seeds rolled a few times, put in the oil pan repeatedly fried, to slightly yellow, with a pressure spoon repeatedly flattened, the powder ball slowly expanded, to the end, the powder ball will become a large ball of sea bowl, thin but not a coin, all over the body golden, the aroma of tempting frying heap.
Mother beckoned us to move the Eight Immortals table to the door, and put a plate of fried vermicelli and a few pieces of wood ear fungus and other dishes, a dish of fried heaps, which consisted of four large, two small, and two round sticks, meaning that the family had large and small men and women, neatly arranged. When you are done, you can light up two cannonballs, that is, the official first day opens the door, and with the sound of the cannon battle, a burst of footsteps like spring thunder rolling from far and near, ten or eight boys of about ten years old are piled up at the door, all holding up long strips of red paper, on which are written "great auspiciousness, peace for young and old, academic progress" and other blessings, the mouth is busy saying: "Uncle Borm, open the door is auspicious!" The mother was full of joy, took a few pieces of red paper from each child's hand, and then issued a small red envelope according to the number of red papers, just finished, and in the distance came the sound of dense gunfire, and the children ran away with a "bang".
Eating fasting in the morning of the first year is our custom, but we don't like it, but we want to eat all the dishes of the year on the first day of the first year, and then every day of the year, big fish and big meat, isn't it really a happy life? And on the morning of the first day of the New Year, in the face of cabbage, vermicelli, radish stewed oyster sauce and other large amounts of sugar and more light and tasteless Jai dishes, it is really not interesting, it is uncomfortable to add rice, that is, to eat two bowls of meaning, so we all casually bite a bowl, cope with things, the mind has been on the table on a pile of New Year's food.
After the meal, queue up to give parents tea, tea inside the red dates, sugar lotus root, each person asked for four red packets, a New Year red packet, a tea red packet, these four red packets, you can go to the town street in exchange for the New Year snacks that the family does not have, oil horn, egg scatter, Yun Ge cake, wonton, etc., the rest can also buy some fireworks to come back to play with the little friends at night, this is our New Year.
The second day of junior high school is the official opening of the New Year, which is the day of the opening of rice cakes. The rice cake was made as early as the twenty-second day of the Waxing Moon. With glutinous rice flour and brown sugar to make a paste, put in a cage woven into a cage, the cage with banana leaves to separate the rice flour and the basket, put in a large iron pot to steam in the water, the general family has to make three buckets of glutinous rice flour, so it has to be steamed for more than ten hours to cook, why steam such a large rice cake, because only eat two meals a day, go to the field all day to work, cut a piece into the ground, eat when hungry, save time to eat back and forth. There is a skill in opening rice cakes, using wire to circle the rice cakes, using chopsticks to wrap the wires at both ends, the two face to face to pull hard, the rice cake is opened, very neat. The second day of the first year is also called "head bud", taking the meaning of the vitality of all things, with two lettuce with roots, green onions and garlic wrapped in red paper, plus two live carp, carp put in their own wells to raise, no well in the river is also OK. After doing this, I waited at home for my aunts to come to visit the New Year.
The second year of junior high school is the day when the married girl returns to her mother's home, five aunts drag their children and daughters, and many cousins and cousins are usually rare to see, and they are very happy. And the parents gathered with their brothers and sisters, talking about the deceased parents, they could not help but sigh, but they turned their heads and looked at the frolicking children next to them, and it was a face of satisfaction and sweetness. As for the New Year's gifts brought by the aunts, most of them were loose fructose biscuits, and after they left, the mother arranged for the sisters to send them to the neighbors one by one, and said which girl had returned.
The third year of junior high school is "red mouth", easy to provoke quarrels, the family plays the Tianjiu card at home, and the candy paper and peanut melon seed shell fall to the ground.
After the fourth year of junior high school, either waiting for relatives at home to come to visit the New Year, or my parents and I rode bicycles to take my sisters to the homes of various relatives to visit the New Year, as far as the huangpu and triangle, close to the uncles and uncles in the village, anyway, all the way to eat. It was the happiest and happiest day of our year.
New Year has a pay attention, "a chicken two dogs three pigs four sheep five cattle six horses seven people eight grains nine soldiers and ten thieves", said to be the birthday of their respective animal characters, so the first one does not kill chickens The first seven is "human day", the first ten doors and windows are locked to prevent thieves, the first seven "people's day" is also exquisite, people's birthdays, that fried fried heap is a must, soup is also a must, no matter who is in the family birthday, it is also necessary to have two kinds of food, but also have a kind of "mustard tea", that is, with the frying heap of oil pot boiled, and then put mustard greens cooked, with the frying heap together.
There is no concept of the fifteenth day of the first month, and there is no lantern. However, the relatives who should go have also finished, and the taste of the year has also faded.
I was depressed that this year also passed too quickly, and suddenly the alarm clock sounded, and I was not depressed, just filling in the memories of the previous New Year that I was thinking about, and it was firmly occupying a position in my heart.
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◆ Zhongshan Daily Media Development Center
◆ Photo/ Chen Longhui
◆ Editor: Xu Xiangdong
◆ Second Instance: Xiang Caizhi
◆ Third trial: Huang Lianjie
◆ Material source: Zhongshan Daily