Chapter 36 3. Palace festivals

The palace attaches great importance to festivals. In addition to the three major festivals (New Year's Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, and Longevity), the palace has different festival diets throughout the year and different seasons. (Liu Ruoyu's "Zhu Zhong Zhi") On the first day of the first month of the Ming Palace on New Year's Day, get up at five o'clock, drink pepper and cypress wine, eat water and snacks, which are dumplings.There is money wrapped in the dumplings, trying to ask for auspiciousness.Ming Palace also eats "Pepsi Daji Box", which packs persimmons, lychees, longan, chestnuts, red dates, etc. in a box, and everyone eats together to share auspiciousness.Later, Beijing eats "mixed rice" during the Chinese New Year, and some people think it came from this.From 4 o'clock in the morning on New Year's Day in the Qing Palace, the emperor went to Tangzi and Fengxian Hall to salute, then went back to Qianqing Palace to have milk tea, and then went to Hongde Hall on the west side to eat auspicious pastry, which was to eat dumplings.One of the buns is wrapped with a small silver coin, put it on the surface, and bite it with one bite, which symbolizes auspiciousness.

Since the Song Dynasty, there has been a custom of eating boiled dumplings on the night of the Lantern Festival, so the Lantern Festival is also called the Lantern Festival.From the ninth day of the first lunar month, the Ming Palace will go to the lantern market to buy lanterns.On the fifteenth, eat Yuanxiao.The method of making Lantern Festival is to make stuffing with walnut kernels, white sugar, and roses, sprinkle water and roll glutinous rice fine noodles, which is similar to the current Lantern Festival.Around the 15th day of the first lunar month in the Qing Palace, the emperors, empresses, concubines, etc. had "Yuanxiao Yipin" for dinner, and the same was true for Emperor Qianlong on his southern tour.

On the second day of the second lunar month, the gate gods (door gods) set up by the gates of the Ming Palace will be withdrawn, and each family will eat fried millet flour jujube cakes, or millet pancakes, which are called "smoke insects".It's time to eat fugu and drink reed bud soup to detoxify fire. In the backyard of Kunning Palace and the East and West Six Palaces during the Qingming Festival, "all are safe with a swing". (Volume 20 of "Zhuo Zhong Zhi") Bake spring pancakes and eat cold food.Folks eat noodles mixed with toon sprouts and tofu mixed with willow leaves, which also affected the diet of the court.

After the peonies are in full bloom on April 4th, a table is set up to enjoy the peonies.On the eighth day of the eighth day, the glutinous rice is wrapped with reed leaves, which can be three or four inches long and one inch wide, and tastes the same as rice dumplings.It is the beginning of the new taste of this year's fruits by tasting cherries during the month.Eat chicken with bamboo shoots and boiled pork.Also use all kinds of refined fat meat, ginger, green onion, garlic, rub it into the size of bean grains, mix it in the rice, wrap it with big lettuce leaves, and eat it, which is called "baoer rice".At the end of April, boil the new wheat ears, peel off the awn shell, and grind them into thin strips to eat.

During the Dragon Boat Festival in the Ming Palace, drink cinnabar, realgar, and calamus wine, eat rice dumplings, and eat water noodles with garlic.On the day after the summer solstice, wear grass hemp seeds and eat "longevity vegetables", that is, purslane.From the first day to the fifth day of May in the Qing Palace, when the emperor, empress, and concubines had meals, there were rice dumplings, and rice dumplings were used to worship the gods and ancestors. On the sixth day of June every year, Ming Palace eats water, and elephants are washed outside Xuanwu Gate.In the first, middle and last days, they also ate the surface of the water.Eat silver seedling vegetables, the new tender roots of lotus root.At the beginning of the summer, koji was made, and it was mixed with white flour and mung bean yellow.On the day of the beginning of autumn before the end of the month, eat lotus pods and lotus root.Emperor Tianqi loved to eat fresh lotus seed soup, and also delicious fresh watermelon seeds, which were roasted with a little salt.

Since the first day of August in the Ming Palace during the Mid-Autumn Festival, there will be mooncake sellers, who will give each other watermelon and lotus root.Xiyuan also picks lotus root.On the Mid-Autumn Festival, moon cakes and fruits are offered, and after the moon rises and incense is burned, there is a big banquet, sometimes all night long, before the banquet ends.Mid-autumn crab fat, steamed with cattail bags, everyone sits in groups of five or six, laughing and laughing, uncovering the navel cover, picky and picky, dipped in vinegar and garlic to accompany the wine.Or remove the sternum of the crab, and the eight-way is complete like a butterfly, I think it is the most skillful.After eating, drink Suye soup.There are also large pomegranates and large agate grapes, which can be cut off at this time and sealed in tanks. They can be stored until the first month, and they are still fresh, sweet and delicious.During the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Qing palace, the emperor burns incense and salutes, and then the concubines salute; if it is in the Summer Resort, a moon offering will be made in the Yanbo Zhishuang courtyard.The concubines, elder brothers, etc. who accompanied them to the villa each had a plate of homemade red moon cakes.

On the Double Ninth Festival, the Ming Palace will eat flower cakes from the first day of September.The ninth day of the lunar month is the Double Ninth Festival, when the emperor climbs Longevity Mountain or Rabbit Mountain, eats Yingshuang spicy rabbit and drinks chrysanthemum wine.It is the month, but also eat longan, bad melon eggplant, drink milk and so on.Wang Shizhen's "Hongzhi Palace Ci" says: "Snow milk rock candy is ingenious and new, and Kunning still eats Feng Cilun." During the Laba Festival, the Ming and Qing courts began to eat sausages, braised pig heads stewed in oil residue, braised sheep heads, chickens with iron feet on a fire plate, steamed milk white, distiller's grain cockles, bad crab, whitebait, etc. Vinegar carp.Appreciate Laba mixed fruit porridge.Eat Laba porridge on the eighth day of the eighth day.Rice, ginkgo, walnut kernels, chestnuts, and water chestnuts are used to make porridge, and they are offered to Buddhas, saints, households, garden trees, and well stoves.The whole family eats and gives gifts to each other.The ingredients of Laba porridge in the Qing Palace are yellow rice, white rice, glutinous rice, millet, millet, purple rice, barley rice, water chestnut rice, etc., plus eight kinds of peach kernels, almonds, melon seeds, peanut kernels, hazelnuts, pine nuts, lotus seeds, and chestnuts.

Chinese farming culture attaches great importance to the twenty-four solar terms, and each lunar festival has cultural meaning. The emperor's diet, although enjoying the delicious food in the world, lacks supervision, lack of science, lack of restraint, and lack of balance.This is one of the main reasons why emperors lived so short.