Today, I went shopping, bought New Year's goods, and walked around to the old street. There are many stalls selling Spring Festival couplets, red lanterns, and lucky mascots, which are colorful and dazzling, making people feel a strong festive atmosphere. I can't help but recall the scene of celebrating the New Year when I lived in Lao Cai.
The New Year's flavor of Lao Cai starts from the lunar month. First of all, a few old people who are a little literate and ink on this street set up a small stall on the side of the alley and wrote Spring Festival couplets to sell blessing characters.
After the twenty-third day of the lunar festival, families begin to clean their houses, buy New Year goods, steam rice cakes, wrap rice dumplings, and then prepare Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
Steaming rice cakes and wrapping zongzi during the New Year are the traditional customs of Yongcheng. Because cooking zongzi requires a large stove and a large cauldron, these stoves are not available in every household, which family in the neighborhood has a big stove, who has a big pot, they will be put together and become public, the east family uses the west family, this family uses up and that family carries it, from the street to the end of the alley, and then from the end of the alley to the street.
Neighbors are accustomed to making zongzi together, and the stove is placed in the open space at the end of the street, and several pots are lined up, respectively holding glutinous rice, mung beans, zongzi leaves, and pork belly. The women were responsible for washing rice, curing meat, and making rice dumplings; Men specialize in manual work such as carrying coal and chopping firewood (in the past, the amount of coal was not enough, and firewood was often used to cook zongzi).
The elderly and children sit around the fire, helping to watch the fire and keep warm. But children can't sit still, they prefer to sing nursery rhymes and walk around the streets.
Zongzi are generally boiled for 8 to 10 hours, and often do not get out of the pot until late at night or in the second half of the night. At this time, the whole alley is full of smoke and fragrance. The children refused to go to sleep for a long time, and they had to wait until they ate the "open pot zongzi" (the first pot of zongzi), otherwise they would be hungry and unable to sleep. This scene, this fragrance, is staged in the old street year after year, forming a unique New Year's landscape in the old street.
Yongcheng people's Chinese New Year's Eve meal, whole chicken, whole duck, whole fish and whole pork are indispensable, which is also a necessary item for ancestor worship. On Chinese New Year's Eve, there are three special foods that cannot be eaten all, and some must be left for the next day.
One is the whole fish, the whole fish, left from Chinese New Year's Eve to the New Year, meaning "more than every year"; The second is even the head with the tail of the sugarcane, but also to keep the "year", Nanning vernacular "Gan" and "gold" homonym, the old rich people, the surplus money to earn interest, is also a way to make money, "sugarcane" that is, "there is gold borrowing"; The third is lettuce with leaves and stems, lettuce and "wealth" homonym, the New Year's lettuce will be hung at the door or placed on the altar, meaning to get rich every year.
Memories of the Spring Festival Gala