What do you eat on the solstice in winter? What's the point?

The winter solstice, also known as the short solstice, has both natural and humanistic connotations. It is not only an important solar term among the 24 solar terms, but also a traditional folk festival in China. The solstice in winter is one of the eight festivals in four seasons, and it is considered as a big holiday in winter. There is an ancient saying that the solstice in winter is as big as a year, so the ancients called it "off-year" or "off-year".

Dietary customs from winter solstice vary in content or details due to different regions. In some areas along the southern coast of China, there is a custom of offering sacrifices to ancestors from winter solstice, and there are more kinds of food that must be eaten from winter solstice than in the north. In northern China, it is a custom to eat jiaozi from winter to Sunday every year.

1. Glutinous rice is one of the traditional foods that Hakka people must eat from winter to Sunday. In autumn, southerners make pork belly into bacon and sausage. After air-drying and storage, on the solstice of winter, the bacon and sausage are diced and cooked with glutinous rice into fragrant glutinous rice.

Glutinous rice is soft and delicious, which warms and nourishes the stomach, and also has the meaning of a family sitting together and having a happy reunion.

2. fermented grains, also called rice wine and fermented grains, are the habit of eating fermented grains in some areas of the south during the winter solstice. Fermented grains are also steamed and fermented with glutinous rice. Fermented grains are also one of the essential diets for southern parturients. Fermented grains can activate qi and blood, promote blood circulation, regulate complexion and blood gas, and warm stomach.

3. Tangyuan, which means reunion and happiness, is also said by the people to be "one year older after eating". Tangyuan is also made of glutinous rice flour, which is as sweet and salty as rice cakes. Jiaozi in Suzhou is mostly salty with meat, while jiaozi in Guangdong is mainly sweet, including black sesame, milk yellow, brown sugar and red bean paste. And the ready-made jiaozi in the supermarket is delicious.

4. The rice cake is also called "rice cake", which is homophonic with "rice cake". The implication of having children at home is getting higher every year, and the implication of doing business is getting better every year. Rice cakes are made into strips, blocks, circles and rectangles, and the eating methods of rice cakes are sweet and salty. Salty rice cakes are usually cooked in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, accompanied by vegetables and mushrooms, and some like to dip in white sugar and fry until slightly golden. They are salty and sweet, soft and sweet.

Thousands of miles of different winds, hundreds of miles of different customs, different customs around the winter solstice, food first, family reunion is naturally the best.