People eat Laba rice porridge on Laba Rice Porridge Festival on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in honor of praying for health, safety and auspice in the coming new year.

On every eve of Laba Rice Porridge Festival, Hangzhou’s Fang Hui Chun Tang invites skillful cook to cook the Laba rice porridge in a copper pot through the night, which contains special herb apart from traditional ingredients, and provides them to local citizens and tourists for free on Laba Day.

Citizens would queue early in the morning and wait quietly for the alms on every Laba Rice Porridge Festival. Nearly ten thousand bowls of porridge are sent to citizens, which makes a great scene in Hefang Street, Hangzhou city.

The Laba Rice Porridge Festival is a traditional Chinese holiday celebrated on the eighth day of the twelfth month (known as Layue) of the lunar Chinese calendar. In China, there is a custom of eating Laba Congees on this day.

The holiday is known since pre-Qin times as a celebration of the new harvest. After Buddhism was spread to China during the 1st century AD, Buddhists all over China was asked to read scriptures and cook congees on the eighth day of the twelfth month in order to commemorate the date when Gautama Buddha achieved his Enlightenment at the age of 35.

During the Qing dynasty, ceremonies held in Yonghe Temple in Beijing during the Laba Festival were quite huge. Eating the Laba Congees is the most important custom of the festival. In many places of Northeast China, Northwest China and Jiangnan, this custom has been preserved, but the custom becomes rarer in South China.

Editor: Lency

Source: fhct.com.cn