Enjoying Foods in Chinese Festivals

5 min read

Nowadays, if you casually leaf through any Chinese calendar, you’ ll notice that many Idays among the 365 days of one year are gaily noted with festive occasions and commemorations.

Undoubtedly, the festival-related food with unique Chinese characteristics plays a significant part in the celebration of the traditional Chinese festivals and holidays.

Spring Festival marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Also, it is the most important festival for the Chinese people.

A saying among northern Chinese people goes,”Noone wouldn’t love to have a bowl of jiaozi for the New Year.”But southern Chinese people do not subscribe tothis belief. Actually, the “New Year food”shared by all the Chinese people from both the north and south is “New Year cake”(nian gao), which literally can be interpreted as “The quality of life is improving year by year.”The New Year cakes from the north, which are mostly sweet, is either steamed or deep-fried. The New Year cakes with hundreds of fruits are a traditional specialty snack popular in Beijing. The northeastern people make NewYear cakes with sticky, husked kaoliang flour. People from Shanxi Province love to eat New Year cakes made of sticky millet flour, while people from Hebei Province love to add dates and mung-bean flour in their New Year cake recipe. Aside from steaming and deep-frying, New Year cakes popular in south China can also be fried and cooked with both salty and sweet flavors. New Year cakes in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, which are light, are made of round-grained, non-sticky rice flour and are good to fry and cook. Preserved ham, dried shrimp and mushrooms picked in winter are added to the radish cakes and taro cakes popular in Guangdong Province; these cakes have a typical flavor, and are deliciously refreshing. New Year cakes were usually hand-made in the past. In the south this is called”husking rice with mortar and pestle to make New Year cakes,”which is regarded as a grand occasion among peasant families there.

First of all, husked rice, which has been soaked in water for a couple of days, is milled into thick liquid on the millstone, drip-dried and then steamed in an iron cooker. After it is steamed, the whole family, old and young, all pitch in and pour it into a stone mortar. The very young, while singing, pound the rice flour with big, wooden pestles, and the old and older children add water and turn over the rice flour, thus ushering in the New Year in the lively activity of husking rice with mortar and pestle to make New Year cakes.

As the saying goes,”Spring Festival won’t be over until the 15th day of the first lunar month”and the celebration lasts as long, and the last day of this celebration falls on another major traditional folk festival, the Lantern Festival(Yuanxiao Jie). Naturally, theChinese eat rice dumplings(yuanxiao) at this festival. People from the north call rice dumplings yuanxiao, while people from the south call them tangyuan. Both yuanxiao and tangyuan are made of sticky rice flour and filling and are round, signifying “union and togetherness.”When making yuanxiao, the northerners first mix sesame, peanuts, sweet bean paste and other ingredients, forming small pieces, then placing them into large bamboo or wicker baskets that contain rice flour. They rock the baskets and sprinkle water continuously on the rice flour in order to make the filling and rice flour form full, round balls. Southerners make tangyuan by wrapping the filling with the sticky rice flour wrapping and then crumpling them into balls. Tangyuan is usually larger than yuanxiao and its filling can be sweet or salty. Southerners also use green vegetables as filling to make large, delectable andlovely tangyuan. Just a couple of tangyuan are enough for a meal.

During the Dragon Boat Festival, which arrives in early summer and lands on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, all families fully participate in picking bamboo or reed leaves, washing sticky rice and wrapping zongzi.

Two or three bamboo or reed leaves are placed on top of each other, creating a pyramid; sticky rice and filling are poured into it and cotton thread is wrapped around this. Boiled zongzi is exquisite and satisfying. If you have zongzi with white sugar or honey, you’ ll be struck by its pleasantly sweet flavor. The filling of the zongzi as prepared by the northerners is sweet, chiefly consisting of small dates and sweetened bean paste. The zongzi made by southerners also contains salty fillings, such as meat, ham and yolk, which contrasts nicely with the sweet, aromatic sticky rice.

In autumn, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the second most important traditional festival for the Chinese people, arrives with the full moon. The mid-autumn moon cakes echo the shape of the full moon, symbolizing “union andtogetherness.”On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, all families gather to appreciate the bright, full moon and eat moon cakes. How happy and close each family is when they gather to enjoy the bright, full moon! Various flavors can be savored, including Beijing-Flavored, Guangdong-Flavored, Suzhou-Flavored, Yunnan-Flavored, Chaozhou-Flavored, Hong-Kong-Flavored, etc. Among these, Guangdong-Flavored is the most popular among the Chinese. Shiny and smooth, these cakes have a thin skin and rich stuffing. Apart from traditional stuffing such as the five nuts, sweet bean paste, lotus seed mash and yolk, almost anything that is edible can be made into stuffing of Guangdong-Flavored moon cakes.

Do not be surprised if you come across moon cakes with a champagne or cheese flavor on Mid-Autumn Festival.

As an essential part of life, food is present every dayfrom the beginning of the year to the end of the year, when winter arrives quickly. Laba Festival, which falls on the eighth day of the 12h lunar month, is the prelude to Spring Festival. On this day, families throughout China put all kinds of food grains into their cookers and make Laba porridge. The food grains boiled in today’s Laba porridge number more than eight and the porridge, made with cereals, beans, potatoes, nuts, dried and candied fruits and vegetables, is both delicious and healthful.

Also on this day, people from the north put new garlic in matured vinegar and preserve it till New Year’s Eve, when, along with Laba garlic and Laba vinegar to accompany jiaozi, they enjoy their first dinner of the coming New Year with great gusto.