What are the customs in beginning of winter today?

1. Eat sugar cane

In Chaoshan area, beginning of winter wants to eat sugar cane and fried fragrant rice. Sugarcane can become one of the foods for "supplementing winter" because there has always been a folk saying that "beginning of winter eats sugarcane without pain", which means that the sugarcane of "beginning of winter" is ripe and will not get angry after eating it. At this time, "eating sugar cane" can not only protect teeth, but also play a nourishing role.

Drink grass root soup

Beginning of winter, commonly known as "Jiaodong" in central Fujian, means the turn of autumn and winter. Beginning of winter "winter tonic", every household must boil root soup, chop the roots of Radix Angelicae Dahuricae, Rhus verniciflua, Litsea cubeba and Paeonia suffruticosa into pieces, put them in a pot to boil thick root soup, remove the root pieces, and then add chicken, duck, rabbit meat or pig's trotters and pig's bellies to boil.

3. eat a gas bar

On this day in early winter, rural families in Zhangzhou will celebrate the harvest with "winter harvest". After the glutinous rice is steamed, pour it into a stone mortar to make it tough and sticky, pull it to the size of a table tennis ball, and carefully knead it into a ball; Stir-fried peanuts, finely ground and mixed with sugar. The prepared rice cake is rolled with white sugar peanut powder and placed in a sea bowl. When eating, string a few pieces with chopsticks in one breath, just like a rattle, so it is also called "playing waves". To prepare a "winter meal", we must respect the land god and thank him for his generosity.

4. Bacon paella

In Changzhou, Suzhou, beginning of winter sometimes has the custom of eating pickles rice, mainly because the local people think that "eating salty tonifies the kidney". Saltiness is the first of the five flavors, which can tonify kidney qi. After beginning of winter, the weather turned cold, people's yang declined, and they needed to eat something salty to tonify the kidney, so there was paella with bacon. Bacon paella, with autumn vegetables and fat and thin bacon, with the new rice of that year, and finally cooked in a earthen stove. The bacon vegetable rice made in this way is delicious and salty.