Overview of Xingyang Landscape Legend

1. Spring Festival Spring Festival is the first year of the lunar calendar, commonly known as "New Year's Day" (the first day of the first month). From the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month to the preparatory stage of the Spring Festival, from Laba to the twentieth day of the first month, it is collectively called the Spring Festival.

Laba, eat Laba porridge and eight-treasure rice on this day (rich people use glutinous rice, lotus seeds, ginkgo, roses, tremella, longan, litchi, preserved fruit and sugar, while ordinary people use sweet potatoes, jujubes, peanuts, cowpeas, soybeans, mung beans, rice and millet to cook). It is customary to leave a big bowl for your own use after the sacrifice and put it in the middle of the grain depot. After that, I will cook some every day until the Spring Festival, which is called "collecting gas".

On the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, every household has to offer sacrifices to the stove. People who go out on this day will go home, burn incense, shoot guns, worship God at night, take down the "Kitchen God", burn it and send it to heaven. The custom is that "women don't sacrifice stoves", and they must pray to "Kitchen God" on behalf of a male parent that "God speaks well and goes back to the palace for good luck"; "Twenty-four house cleaning" is a spring festival cleaning. "Twenty-five cut tofu; 26 pieces of meat; Twenty-seven Kill Year Chicken "to prepare New Year's dishes; "Twenty-eight stickers (Spring Festival couplets, door paintings);" Twenty-nine steamed buns are not only the staple food during the Spring Festival, but also one of the essential gifts for visiting relatives and friends. Surabaya county's new wife went to her parents' house in the New Year, and each person carried 5 to 10 Jin of oil cakes, so she left the saying that girls were called oil cakes. When they gave birth to girls, they said, "Pick up a big oil cake."

Thirty packs of flat food, on the afternoon of the 30th, every family will pack jiaozi, go to worship God first, and then eat it for the whole family. The 30th (or 29th) night of the twelfth lunar month is called "New Year's Eve". People have to stay up all night to show their attachment to the past year, which is also called "resignation". In the early hours of the morning, people spread sesame stalk ash or plant ash around the courtyard, which is called spreading ears, and began to worship gods, burn incense, melt paper, set off firecrackers and light cypress branches. Then, the whole family sat around the fire, wrapped jiaozi, and chatted at home to celebrate the beginning of the New Year.

The first day of the first month is the climax of the Spring Festival. Set off firecrackers, burn incense and worship God before dawn, and then have the first reunion dinner of the year-jiaozi. After breakfast, children and grandchildren kowtow to their ancestors and old people to pay New Year greetings, and then neighbors say hello to each other. Every family prepares peanuts, walnuts, red dates, persimmons and so on. Entertain guests and children who come to kowtow in droves, and give money to children of close relatives.

A reunion dinner. On the first New Year's Eve, according to family conditions, rich dishes are prepared, and the whole family will have a meal, which is called a reunion dinner. On this day, there is no work, "men don't take brooms, women don't take needles", and livestock also rest. As the saying goes, "On New Year's Day, mules and horses rest".

The next day, I began to visit relatives, and the newlyweds went to their father-in-law's house to pay New Year's greetings.

The third day is "Ghost Festival". When parents are newly bereaved, the daughter (son-in-law) will go back to her mother's house to visit the grave, and it is forbidden to go to other people's homes. From the second day to the ninth day, it is customary to visit relatives to celebrate the New Year. The general order is new first, then old, then close relatives and then distant relatives. Gifts in Xingyang and Surabaya are mainly white-flour steamed buns (before liberation, persimmon skins, vegetable fillings or sweet potatoes were often wrapped in white flour, which was said to be a "rule", but in fact, there was no white flour, so snacks were taken in Guangwu area. After the founding of the people's Republic of China, most of them are still like this. In recent years, I changed to snacks. In the first year, the new son-in-law took a look at his father-in-law, plus a "gift list" (big meat), several packs of snacks and sweets, and in recent years, alcohol and tobacco were added.

On the fifth day of the first month, the custom says "breaking five". It means that there are many taboos from the first day to the fourth day of the first month, such as breaking bowls, pots and altars. Broken stubble is called "broken stubble", or rolling noodles is called "filling holes". This is because my family owed a lot of debts and many things were not satisfactory. After eating jiaozi or noodles, there will be no more "broken stubble", or the foreign debt (hole) owed will be made up.

Second, the Lantern Festival Lantern Festival is called Lantern Festival, also known as Shangyuan Festival. The traditional custom is the 14th, 15th and 16th of the first month, and the 15th is a holiday. Eat fried food and go downtown to play, commonly known as "oil six" or "tour six" During the festival, there are three major dramas in the county as usual. During the day, the "stories" (various forms of street performances) of various towns and villages have entered the city to compete. Jiangtou lion, garage dry boat, Longquan car, stilts, West Street back singing and elbow music are all full of flowers, which are very lively. At night, dragon lanterns are spinning and dancing, firecrackers are ringing, and people are running around. In most rural areas where conditions permit, literary and art teams are also organized to perform in the streets and alleys of the village.

After the founding of New China, especially since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, with the improvement of people's lives, the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month is even more colorful, and all the programs selected by villages and towns have to report to the county seat, showing a scene of prosperity.

Third, on the first day of the first month of the second year, the custom says: nineteen, seal. Every family eats jiaozi for breakfast, which is called "Feng". It means that the festival is over, and they will enter farming activities in the future. On that day, incense will be burned during the day and lanterns will be lit at night. Because there is no moonlight, the lights of fireworks are even more dazzling.

4. February 2 "February 2, the dragon looks up", indicating that the spring flood is coming and the farming is busy. At this time, the weather is getting warmer, and there are gradually spring thunder, and hibernating animals will also be unearthed. On this day, I want to eat popcorn, fried beans and fried food at noon.

5. Tomb-Sweeping Day and Tomb-Sweeping Day are one of the "24 solar terms". People have the habit of going out for an outing to sweep graves on this day, so they become one of the four major ghost festivals of the year (the third day of the first month, Tomb-Sweeping Day, July 15th and October 1st). On this day, all families will go to the grave to worship their ancestors. Those who have been buried for three years should "add graves" and hang red, white and yellow paper flags in front of the graves. If there were many children of the deceased, whoever hung up would have said that his filial piety was sincere. It is said that "Qingming comes early, October 1st is the same day as July 15th", and that Tomb-Sweeping Day should go to visit the grave a few days earlier, and at the latest, it can't be later than noon in Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Dragon Boat Festival The fifth day of the fifth lunar month is a festival for Chinese people to commemorate the great patriotic poet Qu Yuan, commonly known as Dragon Boat Festival. People are used to sticking moxa sticks on their doors, wearing sachets, eating zongzi and fried sugar cakes. Residents along the river also threw zongzi into the river to feed the fish, so as not to hurt Qu Yuan's health. On this day, before sunrise, people will go to the countryside to collect Chinese herbal medicines such as Radix Polygalae, Semen Plantaginis, Folium Artemisiae Argyi and Cat's Eye. Used to relieve summer heat and detoxify. Children wear yellow clothes with pictures of scorpions, centipedes, frogs and long snakes, and tie five-color lines around their necks, hands and ankles to avoid being bitten by poisonous insects.

Seven, Tanabata is the night of the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. According to legend, it is the day when the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet at the Magpie Bridge, which is called China Valentine's Day. That night, young women threaded needles on the moon and asked the ingenious weaver for advice, so it was also called "Begging for Cleverness Festival".

8. July 15th The fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month is called Ghost Festival. At this time, every family prepares sacrifices to pay homage to their ancestors. In the old days, villages along the river even set off river lanterns at night, tied them into small squares with shoulder poles, inserted bamboo sticks wrapped in oil-soaked cotton wool on them, lit them and threw them into the river, drifting along the river, filled with lights in order to drown ghosts in the water.

9. Mid-Autumn Festival is commonly known as "August 15th". On the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, the sky is crisp and the moon is in the sky. People have the custom of enjoying the moon. Before the festival, relatives and friends send moon cakes to each other to wish a happy holiday, and there is also the custom of sending moon cakes to married daughters. The moon cake is steamed into a circle with red dates wrapped inside, which means praying for my nephew to become an official and make a fortune as soon as possible. The maximum diameter of moon cakes is one foot and seven inches.

Ten, the Double Ninth Festival, the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, is called the Double Ninth Festival, also known as the Double Ninth Festival. Because nine is a positive number and has a long homophonic sound, it is suitable for hiking in autumn and has been designated as the festival for the elderly by the state in recent years.

November, the first day of October, is the last day of sweeping graves in a year. As the saying goes, "October 1st is a night grave". 10/0/day later, after the busy farming season ended, there was time to remember the kindness of our ancestors and express our condolences.

Twelve, winter is one of the twenty-four solar terms on the solstice, commonly known as "over nine" season into the severe winter, every household is used to eating jiaozi, saying it won't freeze their ears.