The custom of long summer in Tongxiang

Long summer means the end of spring and the beginning of summer. According to climatology, it is summer when the average daily temperature exceeds 22℃.

As the first solar term in summer, people have attached great importance to it since it came into being. In the Han Dynasty, on the day of summer, the emperor led hundreds of officials to welcome the summer in the southern suburbs of Beijing, and held a ceremony of offering sacrifices to Emperor Yan and Zhu Rong. Because according to the five elements theory, summer belongs to fire in the five elements, the corresponding direction is south, and the corresponding color is red. At the welcoming ceremony in summer, the clothes and car flags of the monarch and his subjects were bright red, and at the same time they sang the song of Zhu Ming and danced Qiao Yun's eight-string dance. The scene is very grand. After the sacrifice, the emperor sent Si Tuleideng to various places to urge farmers to pay attention to farming season and pay close attention to farming. Later, the ceremony of long summer became more complicated, but its significance was still to show the farming season and attach importance to farming. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Long Summer gradually developed into a folk festival.

In the folk, people hold various activities at the beginning of summer, such as tasting new food, eating eggs, drinking sour plum soup, seven porridge and seven teas, etc. Summer heat and heatstroke prevention, pray for safe and healthy family and harmonious neighborhood.

Early harvest is also called early harvest, because the hot summer and busy farming season are coming, many crops, melons and fruits are about to mature, and fish are also in the growth period. The taste of the new in the long summer means to bid farewell to yesterday. Because of different regions, the categories of new products are different from place to place. In Changzhou, Jiangsu, there are three kinds of fresh land, three kinds of fresh trees and three kinds of fresh water. Fresh land is amaranth, broad bean, barley ear (or garlic sprout and bamboo shoot), fresh water is sea silk, swordfish and white shrimp, and fresh trees are cherry, plum and toon head (or bayberry and loquat). Changshu, Jiangsu, pays more attention to tasting new things, and wants to be a "nine meats and thirteen vegetables" for ostentation and extravagance. The so-called nine meats are shad, bonito, salted egg, sea lion, stewed chicken, salty and fresh, marinated shrimp, cherry meat and pomfret; Thirteen elements are cucumber, chicory bamboo shoot, grass head, radish, rose, pine flower, cherry, plum, wheat silkworm, bamboo shoot, broad bean, hairy needle and pea.

Eating eggs in long summer is also called long summer eggs. Every household has to cook a pot of eggs. The skilled mother weaves a silk bag with colored thread, puts the dyed eggs in it and hangs them on the child's chest. It is said that the plague can be eliminated. Duck eggs and goose eggs are also used in some areas. Because of this, Chang Xia met the children who were groping around with eggs hanging on their chests. Because of the homonym of "egg", "bag" and "generation", this move also pinned the hope of parents to continue their children and grandchildren-children and grandchildren will live a long and healthy life and be passed down from generation to generation.

Sour plum soup is a soup made by farmers with soaked dark plum as raw material and adding rock sugar, honey and osmanthus. After the long summer, the weather is getting hotter and hotter. In order to cope with the heat in summer, people make soup with ebony. After cooking, they put the soup in a big porcelain jar and let it cool, making it a good summer product. In the old countryside, you can often see vendors knocking on ice cups and selling dark plum soup on the street under the guise of bronze crescent moon.

"Seven porridge" refers to porridge made for beans, rice, etc. Mix them with yellow sugar in summer. It is said that eating this porridge will make the neighborhood more harmonious.

Qijia Tea is a kind of tea brewed with the aged tea of seven families. On the long summer day, people will go to eight families nearby to beg for some old tea leaves placed every other year, usually seven families, and then put them together for children to drink to prevent summer. Because eggs are easy to get tired after eating too much, some people put them in "seven-fen tea" to cook, so "tea eggs" appeared. Later, traders put fennel, dried tangerine peel and other spices into the tea cooked by farmers to make the tea eggs more fragrant. This is the embryonic form of today's tea eggs.

Of course, there are many food activities in the long summer, with different regions and categories, such as "long summer soup", black rice, five tiger eggs (red dates, black dates, walnuts, longan, litchi) and so on.

In addition to all kinds of eating activities, the custom of "weighing people" is also very popular in the Long Summer Festival. It stems from people's fear of summer heat. It is said that after weighing this day, people will not be afraid of the heat, and they will not lose weight, otherwise there will be diseases. In the old society, every household had to weigh people with scales in the long summer. Children usually put them in the laundry basket, while adults and older children weigh them with scales. When weighing children, they will quietly put a stone in the laundry list, one is to add some weight, the other is to take the meaning of longevity. When weighing a person, the weight moves carefully, so you can only draw it out, which means you can only gain weight, but you can't lose weight by drawing it from outside to inside. When weighing, report "nine" and "ten" for good luck. After weighing, everyone should keep in mind their own weight and wait until next summer to compare. Another way to weigh yourself is indoors. The scale is hung on the roof beam, and people weigh each other. This situation is mostly used by women. The saying that long summer is called "calling people" originated in the Three Kingdoms period. After Zhao Shu Zilong rescued Adou from Changbanpo, Liu Bei entrusted Adou to Mrs. Sun, and it was already long summer. Mrs. Sun was afraid that Adou was ill-bred, so she thought of a way to call Adou in front of Zilong and say it again at this time the next year. According to the increase or decrease of weight, it is easy to know whether the child is well raised. Later, people borrowed this method and followed suit. On the day of long summer, they called children together to strengthen the maintenance of children.