What traditional foods do people eat at Lichun? These custom foods are worth knowing about

Lichun is not only the first of the 24 solar terms in the lunar calendar, but at Lichun there are also its own foods, mainly spring pancakes, radish, spring platters, and so on, while in the south it is popular to eat spring rolls, and there are many vendors selling spring rolls in the markets. Now let us take a look together at what traditional foods people eat at Lichun!

Spring rolls

Besides spring pancakes, spring rolls are also a festive food that people often eat on the day of Lichun. Spring rolls evolved from the custom of eating spring platters on the day of Lichun in ancient times. In the Song Dynasty there was a kind of “rolled pancake”, which was a transitional type between spring pancakes and spring rolls. In the Yuan Dynasty, the book *Jujia Biyong Shilei Quanji* already records wrapping fillings in spring pancakes and eating them after frying. By the Qing Dynasty, the name spring rolls had appeared. The method for making spring rolls is to wrap fillings in a cooked round thin dough wrapper, form it into a long strip, and then fry it in oil until it turns golden brown and floats up. The fillings can be meat or vegetarian, salty or sweet.

Spring platter

The spring platter is also called the “five pungent platter”, and is made by finely cutting five kinds of pungent raw vegetables and arranging them on a plate. *Bencao Gangmu* says: “The five pungent vegetables are scallion, garlic, chives, smartweed, and mustard, the pungent tender vegetables mixed and eaten on New Year's Day and Lichun, taking the meaning of welcoming the new.” This custom spread to the Tang, Song, Jin, and Yuan dynasties.

For example, in the Yuan Dynasty, Yelü Chucai wrote the poem “Making a Poor Spring Platter at the Post Station on the Day of Lichun”, in which he mentions using lotus root, peas, scallion, wild rice stem, hotbed chives, and vermicelli to make a spring platter. In the Ningjin area, scallion, garlic, pepper, ginger, and mustard are cut and mixed to eat, and this is called the five pungent platter. It can both accompany alcohol and meals, and also be given to one another as a gift. There were also gifts of green chives and yellow mandarin oranges.

Spring pancakes

The Tang Dynasty *Sishi Baojing* records: “At Lichun, eat reed, spring pancakes, and raw vegetables, called the ‘vegetable platter’.” It can be seen that people in the Tang Dynasty had already begun to try spring platters and eat spring pancakes. The so-called spring pancake, also called lotus leaf pancake, is actually a kind of thin pancake made with scalded dough -- take two small pieces of dough, brush oil in the middle, roll them into a thin pancake, and after cooking they can be separated into two sheets. Spring pancakes are used to wrap vegetables and eat them, and the vegetables include cooked dishes and stir-fried dishes.

The Qing Dynasty book *Tiaoding Ji* once recorded the method for making spring pancakes: “Roll out dough wrappers and add fillings such as ham, chicken, or seasonal vegetable hearts, and fry them to serve guests. Also, salted meat loin, garlic sprouts, black dates, walnut kernels, foreign sugar, and white sugar are ground together, wrapped in spring pancakes, and cut into sections.” This was the way of eating in the Qing Dynasty. In terms of preparation methods, today's spring pancakes still follow the ancient methods of pan-cooking or steaming, and the size can be determined according to personal preference. When eating them, some people like to spread sweet bean sauce and wrap scallions in them, and in some places there is also particular attention to eating them with cooked meat such as shredded pork tripe with sauce and shredded chicken tucked into the spring pancake.

Radish

According to the Han Dynasty book *Simin Yueling* by Cui Shi, our country had very early dietary customs of “eating raw vegetables on the day of Lichun...... taking the meaning of welcoming the new”, and after the Ming and Qing dynasties, the so-called “biting spring” mainly referred to eating radish on the day of Lichun. For example, in the Ming Dynasty, Liu Ruoyu's *Zhuozhong Zhi · Yinshi Haoshang Jilüe* records: “When the next day comes and it is Lichun, regardless of noble or humble, all chew radish”, and it was called ‘biting spring’. In the Qing Dynasty, Fucha Dunchong's *Yanjing Suishi Ji* also records: “Beating spring is Lichun. On this day, wealthy families mostly eat spring pancakes, and women mostly buy radish and eat it, calling it ‘biting spring’, saying it can drive away spring drowsiness.”

Why eat radish? The relatively common saying is that it can relieve spring drowsiness. After Lichun, the temperature gradually rises, and people's yang energy rises step by step. Chinese people, who pay attention to dietary nourishment, at this time chose foods with the characteristics of pungent, sweet, dispersing, and releasing, so that the body can comply with the heavenly seasons. Su Dongpo wrote in a poem: “The radish root still holds the morning dew, since autumn the frost and snow have filled the eastern garden, the radish has borne children and the mustard has grandchildren.” Li Shizhen praised radish even more, believing that it “root and leaves can all be eaten raw, cooked, pickled, made into fermented black beans, made with vinegar, made with sugar, cured, or used as a meal; it is the most beneficial among vegetables.” Radish also has medicinal value such as eliminating phlegm, promoting qi flow, and relieving cough. Perhaps this was the original intention of the ancients in advocating eating radish at Lichun.

Now, the custom of eating spring pancakes and spring platters is rarely seen, and people generally eat dumplings and noodles, which is called “welcoming spring dumplings and beating spring noodles”. On the day of Lichun, there are also many customs. In the northern and western areas of Shandong, on the day of Lichun, mothers would sew small toys such as “spring roosters” and “spring dolls” from colorful scraps of cloth and give them to children as holiday gifts. In places such as Tengzhou and Huimin, for any child who had not been vaccinated against smallpox, the spring rooster's mouth also had to hold a string of soybean grains, one grain for each year of age, meaning the rooster eats the beans and can eat away illnesses such as smallpox and measles.