What’s the Traditional Food for “Beginning of the Spring”?

Chinese moms and grandmas were faced with a day of sweat and toil on Thursday when the country waved goodbye to winter and ushered in spring with traditional meals and other celebrations.

“Lichun” — literally, the “beginning of the spring” — the first day of the first of the 24 divisions of the solar year according to the traditional Chinese calendar.

What’s the food for “beginning of the spring”?

– Spring Pancakes

It seems that every festival in China is celebrated with a certain food. We have moon cakes for the Mid-autumn Day and dumplings for the Spring Festival. Today is February 4, which marks the start of spring. What’s the food for today?

Pancakes! Or more specifically, Spring Pancakes. You can either cook it by yourself to kill time or you can buy it in the supermarket to save time.

And it has to go with several dishes. But what exactly? Some suggest scrambled egg with leek–but some say just egg. And bamboo shoots according to some old sayings, or celery? It seems very hard to reach a consensus but don’t worry, at least we’ve got three must-haves here: braised pork with soy sauce, stir-fried bean sprouts, and egg pancake–which I’m cutting into clumsy shreds.

Eating spring pancake is more or less the same as eating the Peking Duck, which means you’ve got to put everything on the pancake, and make a roll. But its history went far beyond the Duck back to the Eastern Jin Dynasty (316AD－420AD), approximately 1600 years ago.

So bite it and not only will you get the whole prosperous spirit of spring but also a tangible feeling about being Chinese.

Another food for “beginning of the spring”

– Fried Spring Rolls

This dish is different from spring pancakes,pancakes is staple food but this is a snack. This is the snack foods for use as a hospitality friend. It tastes can change according to each person’s hobbies. It can be sweet or salty. Perhaps the boys like to eat this with meat, and girls like to vegetables or sweet.Simply say this is A thin pancake for wrapping up meat, vegetables, etc. This food is a traditional snack, In China it has a very auspicious meaning . It resembles the shape of gold bars. So eat it been a symbol of wealth. Of course, taste is good. Here, I only introduced the practice, as taste depends on yourself.

Ingredients:

Thin pancake

A: (sweet)

Bean paste

B: (salty)

Oil Bean sprout

Carrot(Shredded)

C: (salty with meat)

Oil Shelled shrimp

Mushroom

Carrot(shredded)

Methods:

1. B and C is need to cooked.Heat up with a little oil in the pot and fried ingridients B(C) with a little salt until well done.A,B and C is filling.

2.Place 2 tbsp of filling in the center of thin pancake, fold over until you can not see the filling from the outside.(Do not understand to see picture)

3.Heat up with more oil in the pot and fried all skin is golden,dish off.

Attention: The fried process should been slowly cooked.

Thin pancake on sale in chinese food supermarket.

Editor: Feng Hui Source:chinaculture.org