The Spring Festival meets the cold solar terms.
Eat glutinous rice (Guangdong)
?
There is a saying in Lingnan folk proverb: "Slight cold and severe cold, cold without wind." In the extremely cold days of the traditional solar terms, Guangdong folk formed the custom of eating glutinous rice. In the past, poor people had poor cold protection conditions and no more nutrition to eat. Eating a bowl of glutinous rice to keep out the cold is a tonic. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that glutinous rice is warm and sweet, enters the lung and spleen meridians, has the functions of tonifying deficiency and blood, strengthening spleen and warming stomach, and is a mild tonic. It is common in Guangdong now that before the great cold, every household cooks a pot of fragrant glutinous rice and mixes it with "bacon", dried shrimps, dried squid and mushrooms to welcome the coldest day in the traditional solar terms. The custom of eating glutinous rice in severe cold, although it sounds simple, contains the life experience accumulated by predecessors, because the weather is particularly cold in severe cold, and glutinous rice is a high-calorie food, which has a good cold protection effect. There are many ways to make glutinous rice, which has the effect of tonifying the middle energizer and benefiting qi, so it is most suitable to eat glutinous rice in cold season.
Stewed chicken soup (Nanjing)
In the cold season, Nanjing people's daily diet is more stew and soup. The traditional diet custom of "191 Chicken" is still respected by many citizens' families. Nanjing people choose old hens, or stew them alone, or add ginseng, medlar, black fungus and so on. Drinking chicken soup in winter is really a pleasure. In addition, old Nanjing also likes to make soup. Soup dishes are found all over the country, and the practices are different. For example, the soup in the north tends to be thick, the soup in the south tends to be light and delicate, while the soup in Nanjing takes the flavor of the north and the south, which is neither too thick nor light, but also fresh or sweet.
Eat "Quhan Cake" (Beijing)
The custom of eating "Lianggao" has a long history in Beijing. Cold-dispelling cake is a kind of rice cake, not only because its glutinous rice has higher sugar content than rice, it feels warm all over, and it has the effects of warming up cold, moistening lung and strengthening spleen and stomach, but also because people choose to eat rice cake on the day of "great cold", which also means "high year", which means good luck, peace every year and rising step by step. In the custom of old Beijing, on the day of severe cold, the whole family eats rice cakes separately, which is auspicious and can dispel the cold, so it is called' cake for dispelling cold'.
Summary: As the saying goes, "A cold is another year." Customs with local characteristics make this cold solar term extremely warm.