That evening, while my grandson was sleeping at home, I quietly took the door to buy groceries, and as soon as I entered the supermarket, I saw many people buying dumplings and rice balls. Dumplings are two nine cents a pound, beef and green onion filling, I thought it was an event to sell cheaply, so I bought a pack, and the children didn't like to eat the rice balls, so I didn't buy them. After returning home, the eldest daughter asked on WeChat: Mom, what did you blow up today?There was no frying. After answering my daughter, I wondered why she suddenly asked if she could blow up todayAfter thinking about it for a while, it dawned on me: I remembered, today's Winter Solstice Festival, it turns out that so many people in the supermarket buy dumplings, and they buy dumplings not because they are cheap, but because of the Winter Solstice Festival.
I heard that northerners eat dumplings on the winter solstice, saying that eating dumplings on the winter solstice will not freeze the ears, and from the winter solstice to enter the cold winter of the number nine, when I was a child, I often heard people say: 3949 ice walking, 39 days are not cold but also cold. On the day of the winter solstice, southerners eat rice balls, saying that it means that the family is reunited.
My hometown Shucheng, is a beautiful and individual place, southerners say we are the north, northerners say we are the south, we here winter solstice neither eat dumplings nor rice balls but it is very grand, the ancients said that the winter solstice is as big as the year. On the day of the winter solstice, many of our people kill roosters and ducks (most of them are white feathers) and stew them in sesame oil for men who work at home, saying that it has a tonic effect on men who have lost their strength. Sesame oil is also necessary for many families in their hometown during the winter solstice, and people will take some sesame seeds from home to the oil factory on the set to exchange them, saying that eating sesame oil on the winter solstice has a tonic effect on people.
When I was a child, my father went to school for five of our brothers and sisters in order to make money, and on the day of the winter solstice, my mother would make some rice flour baba, glutinous rice balls, pumpkin balls, taro balls or peel two big taro balls and fry some taro slices, and would use sesame oil to fry two eggs for my grandmother, and also give each of our brothers and sisters a fried egg. Every year two days before the winter solstice, he would go to the street to buy some hemp cakes to fry at home, and also buy dried seeds (called old tofu in some places) to come to the house to pickle the winter solstice day to fried.
After I got married, I naturally learned the same, like my parents, the winter solstice fried goods for the children to eat, two little high school and the eldest daughter went to college, the three children are in school to buy food is really unaffordable, in order to save a little, I went to the town with the children to rent two broken houses we eat and live together, after that I started a mobile small business in the city and countryside, busy with business all day long, there is no time to pay attention to eating and drinking during the festival, the habit of eating fried goods on the winter solstice has gradually faded in our family.
Original Writer: Jing Qianfeng, pen name: Jin Shishanren, 2023, written in Shunan Courtyard on the morning of December 24].