When I was a child, I often ate a red egg, and I was always curious why the eggs were dyed red, and my parents also told us that this was an egg distributed in the full moon wine of my friend's children, so let's understand the historical customs of our dividend eggs.
When the baby is full moon, parents will widely distribute red eggs (red-dyed eggs) to relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues, etc., so that everyone can share their "Langzhang" or "Langhua" joy. In recent years, it has become popular in metropolises to replace egg-shaped chocolate, which is also quite popular. Why send red eggs when you have a child?
It is said that the custom of distributing eggs has its origins in the ancient myth of egg birth. "Art and Literature Cluster" quoted in the "Three-Five Calendars" said: Before the heavens and the earth were opened, the universe was just a chaotic big egg, and the great god Pangu gave birth to a child. After experiencing eighteen thousand years, the heavens and the earth have been opened, the yang is clear for the heavens, the yin is the earth, the Pangu is in it, the day is nine changes, the god is in the heavens, and the holy is on the earth. In ancient books such as the "Records of History", there are also mythical records of the Yin people's first concubine Jian Di swallowing eggs and giving birth to a deed, and the Qin people's first concubine nuns swallowing eggs and giving birth to a great cause. Because the ancestors attributed the opening of heaven and earth, the birth of mankind, and the origin of all things to the creation of "eggs" in their fantasies, the admiration for "eggs" also followed; and because the original chicken was the first bird to be domesticated, and the egg was the most "egg" possessed by man, it was even more natural that the egg was regarded as a mascot with vitality.
But why do you have to dye your eggs red? Moreover, from the existing ancient records, the earliest "painting eggs" did not use red. As early as the pre-Qin era, people used paint to dye eggs, and then boiled in water, gifting each other, called "painting eggs" or "skeletonized chickens"; dyeing eggs in the Wei and Jin Dynasties with "blue axie variegated color", may be the reason why plants containing chlorophyll are relatively easy to obtain; about the Sui and Tang Dynasties, dyeing eggs with red gradually appeared, but still mixed with other colors; and after the Yuanming, the form of donating eggs in spring slowly evolved into a variety of festive occasions that can be given away, and the color is gradually reduced to easy operation. And the single red that best renders the festive atmosphere. Of course, carving and dyeing eggs is still a kind of folk craft that people like to see, and the red egg has been passed down in folklore with its auspicious and festive significance, and has been fixed as a gift to people at the birth of babies and the full moon.
Many of the folk legends about the red eggs in the old times are most famously the story of "Liu Bei's recruitment of relatives": at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhou Yu, the governor of Eastern Wu, wanted to use the strategy of false recruitment and real detention to use Liu Bei as a hostage and force him to return to Jingzhou. Zhuge Liang made a plan and ordered Zhao Yun to escort Liu Bei across the river to become a relative, and at the same time bring a large number of red-stained eggs. When I arrived in Eastern Wu, I sent it everyone, and the road was that Emperor Liu wanted to marry Sun Shangxiang, the princess of your country, please eat red eggs, let everyone rejoice, and let Wu Guotai hold his little grandson in the coming year. This matter was passed on ten times and ten times a hundred times, and every household knew that Sun Shangxiang was going to marry Uncle Liu Huang. Wu Guotai was overjoyed and ordered Sun Quan to do a happy event for them immediately. Sun Quan had no choice but to fake the drama and really do it, and as a result, Liu Bei married a good lady, and Zhou Yu "lost his wife and folded the soldiers." Since then, the Gangnam region has distributed red eggs to relatives and friends every time they get married or have children.