Firecrackers, gongs, Chinese red, and the moral of the annual surplus of 'fish' are the singnals of The Spring Festival.
The Spring Festival couplets originated from "Taofu". They express good wishes and blessings in neat and concise words. They are unique folk literature forms in China. The Spring Festival sticks the word "luck" to express the expectation of the bright stars and the yearning for a happy life. Folk people put the word "Fu" upside down and the homonym "Good luck has arrived home".
On the arrival of the New Year, families set off firecrackers to resign old and welcome new. In ancient times, firecrackers were sound tools to drive away evil spirits. In the Song Dynasty, people began to weave paper cartridges and hemp stems wrapped with gunpowder into strings to make "weaving guns" (firecracker). Today, setting off firecrackers in the Spring Festival not only adds to the festival's happy atmosphere, but also expresses the wish for peace.
Have New Year's Eve dinner. New Year's Eve dinner is also called "reunion dinner", which means that the whole family rushes back from everywhere to get together and have dinner together on New Year's Eve. The people are in good order, speak more auspicious words, and drink moderately to celebrate The Spring Festival. New Year's Eve meal is rich in dishes, meat and vegetable collocation, fish is indispensable because it represents abundance.
According to the literature, the custom of eating dumplings during The Spring Festival had appeared in the Ming Dynasty at the latest. It is particularly noteworthy that by the Qing Dynasty, this custom had been very extensive and had been fixed down. This custom has something to do with ancient Chinese time-keeping. In ancient China, twelve branches were used to record the time of each day. Put every day is divided into twelve periods, so the beginning of each day is the period of the day from 11 p.m.to 1 a.m. Chinese people are very attentive the boundary of resigning the old and welcoming the new. At this time, they usually do some rituals to pray for good luck in the coming year.In The Spring Festival.It's a custom to eat dumplings on the first day of the New Year and at the time of making friends. On New Year's Eve, the snow outside the window falls silently, the light inside the house is warm and the pot is steaming hot. All thoughts and wishes are wrapped in the thin dumpling skin! Red flame boiling water, the more boiled, the more tasty it is.With firecrackers and dumplings, there are also many good expectations for the coming year.
The customs of the Spring Festival in the south are not as uniform as the North, and the customs of different regions are also scattered. In South China, people usually eat rice cakes, chicken soup, fish, and rice balls during the spring festival.
People in the North eat dumplings. People in the South mainly eat rice cakes, especially the people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. The main raw material is glutinous rice , a kind of cake named "NianGao" made with glutinous rice or rice flour.Nian Cake, has a homonym with "Nian Gao" in chinese, which implies that people's work and life are improving year by year. If it is fried, Shanghai people like to put a little sugar on it, and taste better!
Southern New Year's Eve usually has hot pot and fish. The hot pot is boiled, warm and sultry. Many people like to eat hot pot during the Chinese New Year.All kinds of delicious food can be eaten in the hot pot. Secondly, the Chinese New Year eating hot pot means a red fire, and a good color. Many hot pot restaurants specially launched the Spring Festival package during the Spring Festival. The family gathered around to eat a special hot pot, warm and harmonious, and the atmosphere was good.
And there seems to be a hidden rule in the custom of eating fish during The Spring Festival in many areas south of the Yangtze River. Fish is the last dish at the banquet. It is basically not eaten and left on the table. As a mascot, it means " better in the next year ". In some places, when eating fish for New Year's dinner, we should leave the head and tail till next year (that is, the beginning of the year) to express the wish of "having a head and a tail" for the New Year.