According to the old rules in Beijing, the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) begins almost at the beginning of the lunar month. “On the seventh and eighth day of the lunar month, the cold crows freeze to death. “This is the coldest Time of the year. However, after the harsh winter, it will soon be spring, so people do not let the cold reduce the enthusiasm of the New Year and welcome spring.
On the eighth day of the lunar month, people’s homes and temples boil the lunar congee. This special porridge is a sacrifice to the ancestors and gods.
But when you think about it, it is a proud expression of the agricultural society – this porridge is made of all kinds of rice, all kinds of beans, and all kinds of dried fruits (almonds, walnuts, melon seeds, lychee meat, lotus seeds, peanut rice, raisins, rhizome rice ……) boiled into . This is not congee, but a small agricultural fair.
On the eighth day of the lunar month, we also make garlic on the eighth day of the lunar month. The garlic cloves are put into high vinegar on this day and sealed up for the New Year’s dumplings. At the end of the year, the garlic is soaked like emerald, and the vinegar has some spicy flavor, which makes people want to eat more dumplings. In Beijing, every Family eats dumplings on New Year’s Eve.
From the eighth day of the lunar month, the shopkeepers step up their New Year’s Eve shopping, and more stalls are added to the streets – those selling spring scrolls, New Year paintings, honey, daffodils, and so on, which only appear during this season. These New Year’s stalls teach children to beat their hearts a little faster.
In the hutongs, there were more and more complicated shouting voices than usual, among which there were also those that appeared only in the waxing moon, such as those selling calendars, pine sticks, barley, rice cakes, and so on.
In the days of The Emperor, schoolchildren would stop going to school on the 19th day of the lunar month and take a January holiday. Almost the first thing the children did to prepare for the New Year was to buy miscellaneous goods. This is a variety of dried fruits (peanuts, dates, hazelnuts, chestnuts, etc.) and preserves mixed into the ordinary with skin, senior without skin – for example: ordinary with skin of hazelnuts, senior with hazelnut flesh.
Children like to eat these bits and pieces, even if there are no dumplings to eat, they must buy mixed children. The second big thing for them was to buy firecrackers, especially for the boys. I’m afraid the third thing is to buy stuff – kites, firecrackers, harmonica, etc. – and New Year paintings.
The children are busy and the adults are nervous. They have to prepare everything they need to eat and drink for the New Year. They also have to make new shoes and clothes for the children so that the New Year will be a time of renewal.
The 23rd day of the New Year is almost a “dress rehearsal” for the New Year. In the old society, this night, every family sacrifice Zaowang, from a black child firecrackers will sound up, with the sound of the cannon to Zaowang’s paper image incineration, the beautiful name called send Zaowang to heaven.
In the first few days, the streets are more or less sold malt sugar and rice sugar, sugar shape or rectangular block or size melon shape. According to the old saying: with sugar sticking to the mouth of the King of Zao, he will not report bad things in his family to the Jade Emperor when he gets to heaven. Nowadays, there are still candy sellers, but they are only enjoyed by everyone and do not stick to the Zao King’s mouth anymore.
After twenty-three, everyone will be more busy, the New Year is coming in the blink of an eye ah. Before New Year’s Eve, every family must put up the Spring Festival couplets, and must clean the house once, called sweeping. Must be meat, chicken, fish, vegetables, rice cakes and other things are well-prepared, at least enough to eat with a week – according to the old custom, most of the stores, closed for five days, until the sixth day of the first month to open. If you do not prepare Food for the next few days, it is not easy to replenish the temporary.
Also, the old society in the old mothers, the preoccupation in the New Year’s Eve to cut out everything that should be cut out, so as to save the first day of the first month to the fifth then move the knife, move the knife to cut is unlucky. This contains the meaning of superstition. But it also shows that we are indeed peace-loving people, in the first year of the year even cutting kitchen knives do not want to move a.
New Year’s Eve is really lively. Every family rushes to make New Year’s dishes, and the smell of wine and meat is everywhere. Young and old, men and women are dressed in new clothes, red couplets are put up outside the door, the house is put up in various colors of New Year’s paintings, which family lights up all night long, without interruption, the sound of cannons day and night.
People who work outside, unless absolutely necessary, must rush Home to eat the reunion dinner, ancestor worship. This night, except for very young children, no one sleeps, and all have to keep the New Year.
New Year’s Day is very different from New Year’s Eve: New Year’s Eve, the streets are crowded with people; New Year’s Day, stores are on the board, the door is stacked with last night’s firecrackers paper, the whole city is resting.
Most of the stores opened on the sixth day, and firecrackers, from dawn to early morning, the sound of cannons throughout the city. Although the opening, but except for the store selling food and other important daily necessities, we are not very busy, the store in the guys can also take turns to go to the temple, shopping on the flyover and listen to the opera.
Recent Comments