As an old Chinese saying goes, Spring Festival comes right after the Laba Festival, so get ready for a bowl of porridge while looking forward to the long-awaited family get-together.
Today, people across China are celebrating the Laba Festival. It is a traditional Chinese festival. It's on the eighth day of the 12th lunar month. What does this festival mean to Chinese people? It just tells people to prepare for celebrating the coming New Year's Day and for wanderers to return home to get together with their family.
Long long ago, Laba Festival was a day of thanks for a good harvest. On this day, people usually eat Laba porridge, the porridge with eight kinds of mixed grains (谷物) . Many temples today have the tradition of giving out Laba porridge to the public. The sweet, red porridge is believed to bring luck and joy.
The festival is also the day for people to put garlic in vinegar (醋) . The garlic turns green, and this Laba garlic will be eaten with dumplings on Chinese New Year's Day. While in the past, it was used to let people remember to pay back the money they had borrowed, as Laba is near the end of the year and "garlic" (suan, 蒜in Chinese) sounds the same as "calculate" (suan, 算) .
Customs are quite different across the country. People in Qianxian, east China's Anhui Province, will eat the Laba tofu a few days before. In Xining City, northwest China's Qinghai Province, people will eat porridge with beef and mutton.
