What are the Spring Festival customs in Ningbo?

"New Year's Eve" is the most important content in the New Year's Eve. On this day, children from other places will be reunited at home no matter how far away. If you really can't go home, it's only complete to vacate a seat and put chopsticks on the New Year's Eve dinner. Eel owls, red mud crabs, fish and rice cakes are indispensable dishes for Ningbo people.

Keeping the old year is the custom of staying up late to welcome the new year on the last night of the old year. Also known as New Year's Eve, the common name is "Enduring the Year". In ancient times, observing the age has two meanings: the old man's observing the age means "resigning from the old", which means cherishing time; Young people keep their age in order to prolong the life of their parents. On New Year's Eve, men, women and children will be brightly lit and get together to watch the New Year.

Children kowtow to their elders to pay New Year greetings, and adults give their children "lucky money". Because "worship" and "age" are homophonic, "suppression of worship" means "suppression of age", which means suppressing ghosts and preventing them from causing trouble.

On that day, eating jiaozi in the morning means reunion. The biggest feature of this custom is to let household utensils "rest" for one day, without sweeping the floor, begging for fire (not lighting others, not lighting cigarettes), killing animals, not moving knives and scissors, not emptying the toilet, not washing clothes, not scolding children, and not saying unlucky things.

On New Year's Day, when the host gets up, he opens the door with auspicious words and sets off firecrackers at the door, which is called "opening the door gun". Generally, there are three guns when you open the door, so you should "take four and let three go" and leave one as a "backup gun". The "backup gun" in Ningbo dialect is published here.

The higher the firecrackers are set, the louder the sound, which indicates good luck in the new year. If it is a squib, it is bad luck. You should say at once, "Oh, blow it, you will make a fortune this year." And add one immediately.