Travel through the farmhouse leisurely

Chapter 140 Preparing Before Years
After eating, what Lin Xiaoqiao recalled most was the pot of braised pork cooked by Li Shi. Today, she gnawed on three big bones, all of which were as big as an adult's fist. The ones sold at the butcher stalls have no meat on them, just bones.

There is a lot of meat left on these bones, which was specially reserved by Mrs. Li for the family to eat, and because the cooking time is long enough, the meat attached to the bones has been boiled and is about to fall off , so the taste of gnawing these bones is really enjoyable.

After the slaughter of pigs and sheep is over, the New Year's Eve on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month is ushered in. People here also pay more attention to this solar term.

In fact, celebrating the Xiaonian is a beginning of welcoming the New Year. It is said that the 23rd Xiaonian day in the twelfth lunar month is also a day for folk households to worship stoves.

The so-called sacrifice to the stove is actually to worship the stove king. Legend has it that every year on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, the stove king will go to heaven to report the good and evil of the family to the Jade Emperor, and let the Jade Emperor reward and punish him.

Speaking of the "Stove King", Lin Xiaoqiao once heard such a legend from Mrs. Li. According to legend, the Stove King was originally a son of a rich family named Zhang Dan. He once married a virtuous woman Guo Dingxiang. He gave up and married a woman named Li Haitang.But this Mrs. Li is a lazy person. It didn't take long before he squandered the Zhang family's property and remarried to someone else.

Zhang Dan's family suffered a sudden decline, suffered a fire again, and lost his eyesight.reduced to a beggar.

One day, he begged to a family, and the owner of the household gave him some hot soup and rice. Later, he found out that the person who gave the food was his divorced wife Guo Dingxiang. He died in front of the stove and was named the King of the Stove by Jiang Taigong.

The Stove King was only in charge of fire at the beginning, but later he was appointed by the Emperor of Heaven to become the guardian god in charge of the family, and was named the head of the family.

The Stove King has a lot of power, but he doesn't even have a temple the size of an earth temple. There is only one portrait, which is a New Year picture printed on a wooden board and pasted on the stove wall.

On both sides, there are couplets pasted with "God speaks good things, return to the palace to bring auspiciousness" or "Eastern chef is the master, and the southern fire emperor" is written horizontally as "the head of the family".

When sacrificing the stove, every household has to display jujubes and candied melons and other fruits. The candied melons are actually fermented and saccharified food made from barley. When you go to heaven, you only say good things and don't say bad things.

After burning incense and offering sacrifices, the old Zaojun statue should be removed and burned.Put on a new statue of the Stove Lord, so that he is sending the Stove Lord to heaven and reporting to the Jade Emperor.

Not only that, but when offering sacrifices to the stove, a bowl of noodle soup must also be offered. As the saying goes: "The Lord of the Stove's original surname is Zhang, and he has noodle soup once a year."

This miscellaneous noodle soup is made from a mixture of white noodles, bean noodles, and sweet potato noodles. It is made in this way to let the Stove Lord speak more good words.

In addition, people here have a very important rule when offering sacrifices to the stove, because there is a folk custom that "men do not worship the moon, and women do not worship the stove". Therefore, only men can worship the stove king, and women are not eligible. Come forward to worship.

Stove King went to heaven on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, and when he came back from the first and fifth shifts of the lunar new year, even if he had completed the reporting task, he brought auspiciousness to bless his family to live a safe life.

The ancients attached great importance to these rules and etiquette, so Lin Xiaoqiao did not clamor to overthrow such unreasonable rules, but followed the rules and did not participate in the stove sacrifice ceremony.

Although Lin Xiaoqiao is not qualified to worship the Kitchen God, she has been watching Lin Erniu and Dalang Erlang doing these things, as if she experienced it herself.

After paying homage to the Stove King, Lin Xiaoqiao tasted the candied melon, it tasted really sweet and a bit sticky, no wonder it was the Stove King who ate the sweet mouth.

After the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, every household has to clean the courtyard and living room, remove the dirt in the house, buy new year's goods, and prepare food for the new year. They have to be busy until New Year's Eve.

After the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, there are only six or seven days left before the New Year, so every household is more enthusiastic about the preparations for the New Year.

Before welcoming the arrival of the new year, every household has to carry out a thorough cleaning of their home, and clean the interior well, commonly known as sweeping.

The purpose of sweeping the dust is actually to get rid of the old and welcome the new, and to sweep away the unknown. Therefore, every household must carry out the cleaning work conscientiously and thoroughly to keep the house spotless and clean, so as to remove some bad luck and unknown Clean, ushered in is good luck again and again.

Moreover, Lin Xiaoqiao heard that the people here usually regard the 24th of the twelfth lunar month as the "house cleaning day".

This sweeping is actually mainly to thoroughly clean the house, so on this day, Mrs. Li assigned everyone in the house the task of sweeping.

The Lin Xiaoqiao sisters were assigned the task of scrubbing the tables and chairs in the house and washing the floor, and they worked very hard.

The two brothers Lin Erniu and Dalang Erlang had to wrap their heads with scarves respectively, and then cleaned the wall from top to bottom with a broom.

Mrs. Li himself woke up the whole family early on this day, and then cleaned the sheets and other things in each room. In Lin Xiaoqiao's view, this task can also be regarded as a relatively ambitious project. up.

In addition, among all the preparations for the New Year, cutting and cutting window grilles is also the most popular activity among the people here.

As for the cutting and cutting of the window grilles, of course it was the task of the Lin Xiaoqiao sisters and Mrs. Li, because it was a meticulous job.

Lin Erniu was careless, and the two brothers Dalang and Erlang had never been this kind of material. At most, they waited for others to cut it, and they used it to paste it.

Speaking of window grilles, Lin Xiaoqiao was pleasantly surprised to find that the styles and patterns here are really colorful and varied, which makes Lin Xiaoqiao feast his eyes.

For example, magpies climbing plum blossoms, swallows piercing peaches and willows, peacocks playing peonies, lions rolling hydrangeas, three goats playing in Tai, two dragons playing with pearls, deer cranes and tung toons, five bats holding birthdays, rhinos looking at the moon, fish in the year of the lotus, mandarin ducks playing in the water , Liu Hai plays Jin Chan, He He Erxian and so on.Although Mrs. Zhou didn't pay much attention to this when she was in the old house, and she didn't pay much attention to the activity of cutting window grilles every year, but Mrs. Li learned a lot about this window grille cutting from Mrs. Sun when she was still in her natal family. Style pattern etc.

Therefore, when Mrs. Li cut these window grilles at first, she was a little rusty and unskilled, but then gradually regained her previous skills, and cut those window grilles so that they were lifelike and lifelike.

(End of this chapter)