What traditional food to eat during the Beginning of Autumn? Learn about the food customs of different regions during the Beginning of Autumn in advance

The Beginning of Autumn of 2017 is coming soon. Do you know what to eat during the Beginning of Autumn? What traditional food do people usually eat on the day of the Beginning of Autumn? Friends who are interested, let’s take a look together.

What traditional food should we eat during the Beginning of Autumn?

Eat cool cake

In Jinhua, Zhejiang, eating cool cakes at the beginning of autumn is an indispensable traditional custom. What is cool cake? Just boil sweet potato starch into a paste and pour it into a bowl. By the next morning, it has solidified into a whole piece. From a distance, it looks like a round and translucent piece of white jade. Then it is cut into small pieces and sprinkled with sugar, vinegar and mint. It is refreshing, sweet and sour and appetizing.

Eat adzuki beans

Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, Yiwu has had the custom of eating red beans on the day of the Beginning of Autumn. Take seven to fourteen small red beans, swallow them with well water, facing west while taking them. It is said that this can prevent dysentery for the whole autumn. In addition, it is said that bathing on the day of Beginning of Autumn is taboo, because bathing on this day will cause autumn prickly heat.

Eat watermelon

During this traditional solar term, there is a custom in the south of China of "eating autumn melons at the beginning of autumn". On the day of the Beginning of Autumn, people always bring a big watermelon home after get off work. After dinner, when they enjoy the cool air, the whole family sits together to "eat the watermelon" and have a lot of fun. As for why there is this old tradition passed down from generation to generation, it is said that it is because melons are always related to reproduction, "melon ripens and falls off the vine", "blooms and bears fruit", and eating watermelon also represents a beautiful expectation passed down from generation to generation.

Eat dregs at the beginning of autumn

There is a food custom in Shandong that says: "Eat tofu dregs around the beginning of autumn, and you won't vomit or have diarrhea." It means that eating a few bowls of tofu dregs around the beginning of autumn can prevent gastrointestinal problems such as diarrhea in autumn. Autumn is the peak season for gastrointestinal diseases, and this bean dregs is rich in dietary fiber, which has the function of cleansing the stomach and intestines and preventing colon cancer. Therefore, the folk customs in many regions carry the meaning of curing diseases and praying for a year of good health.

Autumn weight gain

There is a folk saying: When the Beginning of Autumn comes, put on weight, and you will be healthy in spring as winter goes by. It is a folk custom to weigh people on the day of the Beginning of Autumn and compare their weight with that at the Beginning of Summer to check whether they are fat or thin. Weight loss is called "bitter summer". At that time, people often judged health only based on fatness or thinness. Of course you need to "replenish" if you are thin. The way to do it is to "put on weight in autumn" and eat delicious food.

Autumn bite

In addition to "putting on weight in autumn", "biting autumn fruits" is also popular in Tianjin and other places. People believe that eating melons at the beginning of autumn can prevent diarrhea in winter and the coming spring. There is a record in Zhang Tao's "Miscellaneous Notes of Tianjin·Customs of the Years" in the Qing Dynasty: "Eating melons at the beginning of autumn is called biting autumn, which can prevent diarrhea." In the Qing Dynasty, people put melons, steamed eggplant preserves, fragrant glutinous rice soup, etc. in the yard to dry overnight on the day before the beginning of autumn. On the day of the beginning of autumn, everyone sat around and "gnawed" them. One reason was to welcome the arrival of autumn and hope that the weather would turn cooler quickly; the other was to use "gnaw autumn" to get rid of the summer heat and avoid dysentery.