The Spring Festival symbolizes unity and prosperity. The first day of the Lunar New Year is the dynasty of the year, the dynasty of the moon, and the dynasty of the sun, so it is also called "three dynasties". At the beginning of the first lunar month, Chinese enter the theme of welcoming the New Year, worshipping the gods, and praying for a good year.
Welcome the New Year on the first day of the first lunar month. In the morning, each family burns incense to pay homage to the heavens and the earth, worship the ancestors, and then congratulate the elders in turn, and then congratulate each other with relatives and friends of the same ethnic group.
New Year's Greetings is one of the customary activities of the Year. On the morning of the first day of the new year, we worship the "god of the year" with a prayer. Also known as "Setti" and "Tai Nian", "Year" is the name of the era star created during the Emperor's era. The god of the age is also a god of folk belief, with the sixty koshi's dry branch chronology as the operating cycle, a total of sixty, every year there is a god on duty, in the year of the age of the too old is called "the value of the year too old", is the master of the year, in charge of the auspicious and evil blessings of the world. As stated in the Three Lives Society, "He who is too old is the lord of one year and the leader of the gods." New Year's greetings are the oldest Traditional New Year customs, which are still prevalent in Guangdong today, especially in the Wuchuan area. On the occasion of the new year's day, when the old is greeted and the new year is greeted, the new year is greeted, the heavens and the earth, the gods of the year, blessings, and prayers for the New Year. This traditional custom has been passed down from generation to generation, and to this day, the New Year's Greeting is still one of the main customs of the Spring Festival.
It is said that the first day of the first month of the first month is the birthday of the broom, and the broom cannot be used on this day, otherwise it will sweep away luck and break the money, and attract the "broom star" and incur bad luck. If you have to sweep the floor, you must sweep from the outside to the inside. On this day, you can't throw water and dump garbage outside, for fear of ruining your money. Today, many places still preserve this custom, sweeping away the Chinese New Year's Eve, not producing a broom at the beginning of the year, not taking out garbage, and preparing a large bucket to hold wastewater, and not spilling it on the day.
The taste gene of the Spring Festival
Narrator: Shen Jialu (writer, 63 years old)
Shanghai is a city of immigrants, and foreign culture profoundly affects the daily life and customs of Shanghai citizens. I was born in Shanghai, and my parents are from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, so I am still from Shaoxing. When I was a child, my deepest memories of the New Year were to worship my ancestors on the morning of the first day of the New Year. Our family lives in Shikumen, not as spacious as in the countryside, with a main hall and a side room, but the ancestor worship is still not sloppy. At that time, there were no pictures of great-grandparents, and my father wrote the names of his ancestors on straw paper, folded them into several cardboards, and wrote their names. Dishes, wine, and chopsticks are then placed, and the family is orderly and takes turns to kowtow. I was the youngest and finally stumbled.
At that time, I was only 5 or 6 years old, and I remember the ancestor worship once or twice. In 1965, he began to advocate the change of customs and customs, the family did not worship the ancestors, my father usually liked to write and write poetry, and before the New Year, he enthusiastically wrote the Spring Festival and distributed it to neighbors. There are both classic sentences of "listening to Chairman Mao and following the Communist Party" in the Spring Festival League, as well as joint sentences selected from Chairman Mao's poems, and the pair of Spring Leagues that I remember most vividly are "standing at the doorstep of the home and looking at the whole world", with great courage and lofty ambitions, and for the teenagers in the formation of the Three Views, the positive energy is huge.
The Shikumen Lane where we live is very ordinary, but every time before the Spring Festival, the master of the housing management office will paint the door of each household with black paint, and after pasting the big red Spring League, the black paint and white wall red couplet are very beautiful. Shanghainese people have vision, know that the general understanding, change customs and customs is an overnight thing.
Chinese taste genes are the most profound, and now I consciously retain my own taste genes. During the Chinese New Year, there are two dishes in the family that belong to my heritage, one is yellow fish and fish roast meat, and the other is shrimp oil soaked chicken. Zhejiang coastal small fish and shrimp can not be cooked alone pickled up, fermentation after adding spices, wine, it becomes shrimp oil sauce, also called fish sauce. Unlike Thai fish sauce, our Shrimp Oil Sauce in Zhejiang is more fragrant. Shrimp oil sauce and chicken broth are blended one-to-one, add shallots and ginger, boil and cool, then immerse in the mature whole chicken, and eat the next day. Unfortunately, my wife and son are not allowed to eat, my wife is a local, and her reserved dish is a blind leaf bag. A shrimp oil sauce soaked chicken, I ate alone from the first day of the new year to the fifth day of the first year.
What do Shanghainese people eat for the New Year? Spring rolls, rice cakes, eight treasure rice. I guess the spring rolls are an upgraded version of the spring cake. Now many people don't know what spring cakes are, but spring rolls are loved by everyone. Spring roll skin wrapped in shredded cabbage or yellow sprouts meat shredded filling, wrapped into the shape of a small pillow, fried in the pan until golden brown, served with vinegar, eat everyone squeaky, silk haha, really happy. A spring roll is a "gold bar"! Shanghainese people also eat rice cakes during the New Year, which is about the meaning of "rising every year", and there are also happy wishes in it. This is also the inheritance of the genes of Jiangnan rice cultivation civilization, which is the same as the northerners who eat dumplings in the wheat culture background for the New Year.
Soup rice cakes, fried rice cakes, are the staple food of ordinary days, Shanghainese people will also eat sugar rice cakes when the New Year. Sugar rice cake is added with brown sugar, the color is light red or brown, the surface is sprinkled with some sugar osmanthus flowers, square, red and white, can be steamed, can also be fried. Now the sugar rice cake flower head is very strong, can be made into pisces, lotus, shou peach and other shapes, first for the god of wealth and then taste it, full of joy! Children like to eat baked rice cakes, a pair of fire tongs set up a rice cake, rested on the briquette stove, baked until two sides of the brown, in two small hands of black ink poured back and forth, a twist in half, there is a feeling of tough knots, a bite will leave a clear tooth marks.
It's the New Year, what flowers and fruits should be prepared at home? Shanghai people are influenced by Jiangnan culture, the New Year at home offerings are also exquisite, generally offering golden dates, kumquats, bergamots, ham, etc., the flowers placed in the living room can not be mistaken, daffodils, kumquats, tianzhu, orchids, silver willows, plums are auspicious and pleasing, daffodils should be placed in a special daffodil pot, and then use red paper belt "corset", both to prevent leaves from scattering, but also with joy. Bergamot, incense rafters, and Wen Dan are piled on a vermilion lacquered wooden plate with a good look, and the aroma is quite elegant. In recent years, some people will carry a bundle of sugar cane on the doorstep of their homes, symbolizing the height of the festival, which is also a thing.
Early in the morning of the first day of the first lunar month, if you go to a century-old tea house like Huxinting to drink tea, you need to bring a little broken silver, and the tea doctor brings you Yuanbao tea - along with the tea cup, there are two sandalwood olives rolling in a fine porcelain dish. The olive is shaped like a yuan treasure, so it has this good color head. Sandalwood olives are also called Dafu Guo, also known as Green Fruit, and the harmonic sound "please come over". In this way, you have to tip the little brother of the running hall. Dr. Tea shouted in the hall: "Mr. Zhang ate Yuanbao tea, and earned Yuanbao all year round!" ”
Life is like this, and urban people may sometimes wish to enjoy the worldly fun, because the fun contains a beautiful vision.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shi Chenlu Text Editor: Shi Chenlu Caption Source: Visual China Photo Editor: Cao Liyuan