Many people in the south like this kind of food for Qingming Festival. The Youth League is a traditional festival food of the Han nationality. Eat Youth League is mainly popular in Jiangnan area of the Qingming Festival, cold food festival and other festivals. It is a kind of green pastry made of straw juice. The method is to put tender wormwood and small Jimu grass into a large pot, add lime to steam them, float off the lime water, and knead them into glutinous rice flour to make a turquoise green pastry.
Why did Qingming eat the Youth League
It is said that one year on Tomb Sweeping Day, Li Xiucheng, a general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was hunted by the Qing soldiers. A farmer nearby came forward to help, disguised Li Xiucheng as a farmer and cultivated with him. Li Xiucheng was not caught, and the Qing soldiers were not willing to give up. So they set up additional soldiers and posts in the village. Everyone who went out of the village had to be inspected to prevent them from bringing food to Li Xiucheng.
After returning home, when the farmer was thinking about what to bring to Li Xiucheng, he stepped on a clump of wormwood and slipped. When he got up, his hands and knees were dyed green. He quickly picked some wormwood, washed it, boiled it, squeezed the juice, and rubbed it into the glutinous rice flour to make rice balls. Then put the green regiment in the grass and mix with the Sentinels at the entrance of the village. When Li Xiucheng ate the Youth League, he found it fragrant, waxy and non stick to his teeth. After dark, he bypassed the Qing sentry and returned safely to the base camp. Later, Li Xiucheng ordered the Taiping army to learn to be a Youth League to defend itself against the enemy. The custom of eating the Youth League spread.
Why eat the Youth League on Qingming Festival
Every time around Qingming Festival, there will be 'Youth League' in vegetable markets and supermarkets, which is called Qingming Tuanzi in Hangzhou dialect. This dumpling is the same as moon cake. It's solar term food. Qingming eat dumplings, can be traced back to thousands of years ago.
If we want to talk about the Qingming Festival, we have to start with the cold food festival. Of course, this festival has been lost.
Cold food festival, one or two days before Qingming. The main custom of this festival is to forbid fire. It is not allowed to make a fire and cook it. You can only eat prepared cooked food, so it is named.
It is said that the cold food festival originated from the state of Jin in the spring and Autumn period. Chong Er, the son of Jin, was exiled to foreign countries for 19 years. When Chong Er became Duke Wen of Jin Dynasty, he asked Jie Zitui to be an official. Jie Zitui was not happy and hid in the mountains with his old mother. Duke Wen of Jin thought of a bad way to set fire to the mountain and force Jiezi to push it out. He didn't know that Jiezi would rather burn to death than go out of the mountain. Duke Wen of Jin was very sad. He ordered that the day Jie Zitui was burned to death should be designated as cold food festival. Every year after that, it was forbidden to light a fire and eat cold food in cold food festival to show his remembrance.
However, it is said that the true origin of the cold food festival originated from the ancient system of drilling wood and seeking new fire. Because of different seasons, the ancients used different trees to drill fire. Every time we change the fire, we have to exchange for a new one. Before a new fire comes, people are forbidden to make a fire. This was a major event at that time. When the fire was forbidden, people prepared some cold food for eating. Later, the cold food festival and the Qingming Festival merged. Although they could not help getting angry, the custom of eating cold food was fixed.
Qingming dumpling is one of the traditional foods. According to the records of trivial records, on a cold food day, Shu people picked the leaves of tung trees, dyed the rice with holly, and the color was green and bright. It is also said in Qi Xiu Lei Gu of the Ming Dynasty that the ancients ate cold food and picked the leaves of Yang Tong, dyed the rice with green color for sacrifice. It is Ziyang Qi, but now it is Qingming Tuanzi. Qingjialu of the Qing Dynasty has a clearer explanation for the Youth League: the cooked lotus root sold by the Youth League on the market is a product of ancestor worship and can be eaten cold.
Why do you want to dye it blue? It's said that it's related to offering sacrifices to Dayu, because it's the time for winter wheat to turn green during the Qingming Festival. The glutinous rice flour is dyed blue to show that Dayu's kindness in water control is not forgotten.
Four groups of people do not eat green League
1、 It is absolutely not suitable for old people and children to eat green League. Because glutinous rice, the main material for making the Youth League, is a very difficult food to digest. The digestive function of the elderly and children is not good. For them, eating Green League is undoubtedly making the digestive system worse;
2、 Patients with pancreatitis and gastritis are strictly prohibited to eat green League, because the glutinous rice in the Green League will lead to the recurrence of these inflammation or deterioration of the disease;
3、 Diabetics fasting Green League, Green League contains a lot of sugar, now the business launched a new Green League contains sugar 'growing', diabetics eating Green League will undoubtedly make the disease worse;
4、 Patients with indigestion, cholecystitis and may not be eating worse.