New Year customs in Jingdezhen

1. Every household posts Spring Festival couplets to celebrate New Year’s Eve reunions, bids farewell to the old year with the sound of firecrackers, and happily goes to pay New Year greetings. This is the "Quartet" of the Spring Festival, and the southeast, northwest and northwest are nothing more than this pattern. In history, Jingdezhen was known as the "Eighteen Provinces Wharf" in ancient times. Although their native languages ??are different, due to long-term mutual adaptation, the mutual penetration of living habits, and the exchange of language and emotions, the Spring Festival customs are basically the same.

2. The custom of pasting Spring Festival couplets has a history of more than a thousand years. Spring couplets are also called door pairs, spring posts, couplets, peach charms, etc. The Spring Festival couplets posted on people's homes in the town are just like those everywhere. They describe the background of the times and express good wishes and blessings in concise and beautiful words.

But the town is also different from other places, that is, the archways and Spring Festival couplets set up at the gates of the kiln houses and rough houses with pine and cypress branches. Above the lintel of the archway, the four characters "Celebrate the New Year" and the upper and lower couplets are composed of a needle spoon (porcelain soup ladle) or a small porcelain plate. This should be a major feature of the porcelain capital.

3. New Year’s Eve dinner and staying up late on New Year’s Eve: Common people have a saying: “If you have money but don’t have money, just go home and celebrate the New Year.” Chinese people attach great importance to family ties. In order to reunite the family, foreigners have to travel all the way home to reunite and have New Year's Eve dinner.

4. For the New Year’s Eve dinner in the town, no matter whether you are rich or poor, the dish "Cat Fish with Cooked Bean Chong" must not be missing. "Cat" and "Nian" are homophones, which means there is more than enough every year. People from Duchang in Jing still have the custom of having two New Year's Eve dinners, that is, on the 29th and 30th nights of the twelfth lunar month. Why is this so? The elders say that this is to commemorate their ancestors.

5. During the New Year’s Eve, when the older generation distributes New Year’s money to the younger generation, they also repeatedly tell the children not to say “dirty words” (unlucky words) in the new year. Many elders do this on New Year’s Eve Just use straw paper to wipe the child's lips. The purpose is to prevent the child from farting as a "butt mouth" if he talks nonsense. Some families still put garlic on furniture and cupboards on New Year's Eve to show that they are planning to spend money (garlic) next year.

6. New Year greeting ceremony: Men greet each other in the New Year, clasping their hands in a salute: "Good health, I wish you good luck and prosperity." When a woman meets, she puts her palms together and puts them on her right lower abdomen, bends her knees slightly, and bows her body three times. Both parties take the same step and regard it as a New Year greeting, which is only done between neighbors, because they are not allowed to go out from the first to the seventh day of the lunar month, so they may have to stay at home to greet guests.

Until after the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, you can visit relatives and friends, commonly known as "chufang". New Year gifts are almost always a pack of sugar cane and two sugar canes, and the sugar cane must be covered with a long strip of red paper. Paying New Year greetings is the happiest thing for children, and the song "New Year greetings, New Year greetings, and red envelopes are coming forward" has been sung for hundreds of years.