What are the customs of Laba Festival in the southern region?

What are the customs of Laba Festival in the southern region?
Due to the vast territory of our country and the inconvenient transportation in the past, the same festival has different customs in different places. What are the customs of Laba Festival in the south? The weather is covered in snow, but the cold climate cannot chill people's hearts. There will be many reunion festivals in the twelfth month of the lunar calendar. What should we pay attention to in this reunion month? The fortune teller website will help you understand the twelfth month of the lunar calendar.

What are the customs of Laba Festival in the south?

People in Zhejiang and Jiangsu eat two kinds of Laba porridge: sweet and salty. Water chestnuts, walnut kernels, pine nuts, Euryale ferox, red dates, chestnuts, fungus, green vegetables, enoki mushrooms, etc. should be added to Laba porridge. If you are cooking salty porridge, just add vegetables and oil into it.
Zhejiang people usually use walnut kernels, pine nut kernels, lotus seeds, red dates, longan meat, lychee meat, etc. to cook Laba porridge, which is sweet and delicious. It is said that this method of cooking porridge originated from Nanjing.
The Laba Festival in Guangdong is one of China's traditional festivals. On this day, people worship their ancestors and the gods of heaven and earth, praying for a good harvest and good luck. There is a custom of eating Laba porridge in various places. After Buddhism became popular, the Buddha's Enlightenment Day was merged with Laba Festival. Famous temples such as Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou and Hanshan Temple in Suzhou still provide porridge on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. But in Guangdong, the atmosphere of Laba Festival is very dull.
Why don't Guangdong people celebrate Laba Festival? This is related to the geographical location and the living habits of the Cantonese people since ancient times. In ancient times, the Lingnan water towns had not yet been developed, and the indigenous people's livelihood was not mainly based on farming. They made a living by catching shrimps and fish in the water. No one cultivated the beans and grains needed to make Laba porridge, so there was no custom of eating these things.
Some people in Guangdong also celebrate Laba Festival, but mainly in the Pearl River Delta area. It is a custom brought by the Hakka people from the north, but the ingredients used to make Laba porridge are different. For example, millet and red dates are mostly used in the north, while glutinous rice, lilies, lotus seeds, etc. are mostly used in the south.
The traditional Laba porridge in Fuzhou, Fujian has an interesting feature: a small lion made of several kinds of fruits is placed on the porridge to ward off evil spirits. In the past, people in Fuzhou usually started making Laba porridge on the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, simmered it overnight, and the porridge was ready in the early morning of the next day.
Some families will first carve the fruit into various shapes, the most interesting of which is making a "fruit lion". Remove the pits from crisp dates and dry them to make the lion's body, use half a walnut kernel as the lion's head, peach kernels as the lion's feet, and almonds as the lion's tail. Then use syrup to stick the various parts together and place them on the porridge. If the bowl is large, you can also place two lions to represent the meaning of "warding off evil and bringing good luck". In large temples, you can also see small figures of the Eight Immortals, Arhats, the God of Longevity, etc. made from colored foods such as jujube paste, bean paste, and hawthorn.
After Laba porridge is cooked, it is first offered to gods and ancestors in the morning, and then given to relatives, friends and neighbors before noon. At the end the whole family shares the food, leaving some as a sign of “abundance every year.” In the coldest days of winter, drinking a bowl of steaming, sweet and delicious Laba porridge can drive away the cold and warm the stomach, which is also beneficial to human health.
Laba Festival in Jiangxi is the first festival before the Spring Festival. People in Nanchang regard "Laba" as a prelude to the Chinese New Year. Starting from Laba Festival, every household starts preparing peanuts, melon seeds, pickled meat and other New Year’s goods. There is a saying among the people that “After eating Laba porridge, people begin to look forward to the new year.”
“You don’t need to pick a good day for Laba, it brings good luck, fortune and longevity.” In Nanchang, Laba is also a traditional auspicious day. On this day, in addition to drinking "Laba porridge", people in Nanchang also often hold "Laba weddings" such as engagement, marrying a daughter-in-law, and marrying a daughter.
In ancient times, the custom of the La Day included not only worshipping gods and ancestors, but also "Nuo". Nuo is a unique culture of Jiangxi Province, a ritual to drive away plague ghosts. In Nanchang, in order to inherit and develop Nuo culture, Honggutan New District invested heavily in the construction of the Nuo Culture Park. According to historical records, performers usually wear masks to dress up as King Kong, Hercules, Fangxiang, etc., and hold knives and axes. Everyone beats drums and shouts to drive away evil spirits and diseases. This is also called La drum to drive away epidemics. Legend has it that it can keep children safe and healthy. Later, people changed the form of eating fried beans, fried wheat, etc. No matter beans or wheat, they had to be fried until cooked, and then let children eat some, which was called "biting ghosts".

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