Xiamen people have a soft spot for ducks. They eat ducks, salted ducks, sauced ducks, roast ducks and four kinds of marinated ducks all year round, and they also eat ginger ducks from the solstice in winter. Ginger duck is made from muscovy duck with red face. After frying duck with sesame oil, add ginger (ginger) and rice wine to stew. It has the functions of soothing liver and moistening lung, nourishing stomach and strengthening spleen, relaxing muscles and tendons, promoting blood circulation, dispelling cold and resolving phlegm, and is especially nourishing. Ginger ducks are seldom cooked at home, so when the solstice of winter arrives, many people begin to queue up to buy ginger ducks.
Fuzhou people rub "rice time" (it is a word, the fourth sound of xi), put bamboo rafts on the table, and put some red oranges, a pair of red chopsticks and a pair of paper flowers in the basket. Rubbing "meal time" is also called "rubbing round", which means reunion; "Rice market" symbolizes "transshipment". The family sat around the round table, singing while rubbing rice.
It is a custom in Zhangzhou to eat sugar balls on the solstice in winter. On the eve of the festival, every household grinds glutinous rice into balls and puts them on bamboo curtains. The next morning, it was cooked in a brown sugar pot as a holiday breakfast. In the past, farmers also went to the ancestral temple to worship their ancestors on this day.
When the weather gets cold, "Old Longyan" will go to the mountains to pick ramie or wormwood and mash it. After kneading the dough with glutinous rice flour, the dough will be light green and used as the skin of "ghost cake" As for the stuffing, generally use plum vegetables, dried bamboo shoots, mushrooms, with pork belly, seasoning, fried. When the fragrance of grass leaves wafts out from the lid of the steamer and the "green clothes" are slightly crystal clear, take it out and take a bite. The skin is waxy and soft, and the stuffing of oily flowers is accompanied by the fragrance of grass leaves, but it feels refreshing.
Shaxian people's dumplings like to be served with spices such as bamboo shoots and coriander. Because Shaxian County is close to Sanming City, some customs have gradually disappeared, and some traditional customs, such as dragon and lion dances, are estimated to be seen only in rural areas.
To celebrate the winter solstice in rural areas, it is customary to treat guests with bean flour and black sesame brown sugar to show good luck, and then dip in condiments made of bean flour, black sesame and brown sugar, which are flexible, fresh, smooth, sweet and delicious.
Hakkas call the winter solstice "winter festival" and "sub-festival". There is a folk proverb in Ninghua: "The solstice in winter is long and short, and the solstice in summer is short and long." Therefore, on the solstice of winter, they will supplement and brew rice wine and make bacon. And the villagers' first choice for tonic is dog meat. On that day, most people bought puppies and slaughtered them, and used dog meat with some Chinese medicines such as angelica, codonopsis pilosula, radix rehmanniae, astragalus and ginseng. It is necessary to replenish blood and qi, and then stew or eat, and you must get up in the morning to eat. There are also some villagers who stew with tonics such as pig's trotters and cocks.