On the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, Shanghainese call it "August and a half", and people attach great importance to this autumn season. Because this day happens to be in autumn, it is called Mid-Autumn Festival, also called Mid-Autumn Festival, Reunion Festival, August Festival and so on. Eating moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the traditional food customs in Shanghai. Su Dongpo wrote in a poem: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, and there are crisps and fillings in them." It shows that this kind of round moon-like food with stuffing has appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty.
I remember when I was a child, the Mid-Autumn Festival was very noisy. At that time, every family had many children, and they ate very little because of economic constraints. But in August and a half, adults always tried their best to make a lot of delicious food. Besides moon cakes, there were sweet-scented osmanthus candied taro, glutinous rice candied lotus root, baked edamame, hairy crabs, pink water chestnut and pearl rice (corn).
"sweet osmanthus fragrance on August 15th". At that time, the Mid-Autumn Festival didn't have a holiday. I remember that on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, my father always bought some sweet-scented osmanthus wine after work, and my mother would pick a few blooming sweet-scented osmanthus flowers from the park. The whole family got together, sat in the middle of the patio, drank wine, enjoyed the moon and tasted moon cakes. The family was round and round, and it was really an unforgettable time in childhood.
Later, my brother and I went to the countryside, and our family lived in three places. Every festive season, it was often a moonlit night, looking up at the starry sky, holding the moon cakes sent by my parents to the post office, watching Hongyan pass books and feeling the thoughts and greetings of my loved ones. Times have changed, and now I sometimes think foolishly. Wouldn't it be very happy to have a computer and make a video call at that time?
Before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival in Shanghai, the business of selling osmanthus wine at home was always much better than usual. Teach people to like hanging flowers, and soak sweet-scented osmanthus with sugar and salt, and keep it in a sealed glass bottle for a long time. When making cakes, it can be made into Osmanthus Jelly with rice flour, or sprinkle a pinch when cooking sweet-potato soup and sugar taro, which has good color, smell and taste. Sometimes it is added when making tea, which is called osmanthus tea. In addition, Shanghainese like to eat glutinous rice sweet osmanthus wine, sweet osmanthus sugar taro and glutinous rice sugar lotus root. To this day, there is also a delicious food for hangover in restaurants of all sizes: osmanthus wine-brewed small garden, which is also my favorite. Whenever I order, I will definitely choose it. Of course, each restaurant has different practices and gives people a very different feeling!
When I was a child, I lived in an old house in Xujiahui. The neighbors next door were all descendants of Xu Guangqi, who should be the aborigines of Shanghai and have many customs and habits. According to the old people, the Mid-Autumn Festival in Shanghai also had the custom of offering sacrifices to the moon and burning incense. When the moon is sacrificed, when the moon rises, a case is set up in the open air to provide food such as moon cakes, melons and fruits, edamame, taro and lotus roots. When the moon is sacrificed, women usually worship first, men worship later, and after the moon is sacrificed, the whole family eats reunion wine and enjoys the moon meal. If a woman goes back to her mother's house for temporary residence, she must return to her husband's house on Mid-Autumn Night, because this is because of the reunion festival. Traveling in mid-autumn night to enjoy the moon is called "walking on the moon" by Shanghainese, and women travel together at night, which is called "stepping on the moon". At that time, Shanghai was still a water town. On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, people went out to enjoy the moon one after another. The willow shadows danced along the river bank, and the reflection of the bright moon rippled in the water under the stone bridge, which formed a wonderful contrast with the bright moon in the sky. I saw tourists everywhere, scrambling to watch. At that time, there was a unique landscape of "Liang Shi jathyapple" outside Xiaodongmen, which was quite famous and was known as one of the "Eight Scenes in Shanghai".
At that time, the folk Mid-Autumn Festival in Shanghai also had the custom of burning incense and fighting. The so-called fragrant bucket is made by a paper-binding shop. It has a square shape, with a big top and a small bottom. The big one is about two feet wide around. The incense sticks are covered with gauze and silk, painted with pictures such as pavilions and pavilions of the Moon Palace, and some incense sticks are woven with thread incense, and decorated with paper-bound Longmen Kuixing and colorful flags. On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, under the piers of many bridges inside and outside the city, special large-scale incense sticks are lit, which is quite spectacular.
The neighbors of the old house have many relatives who live in the countryside of Sijing, Qingpu, a suburb. They worship their ancestors in the Mid-Autumn Festival, and often several families act together. This is called the "Young Seedling Meeting" in the old customs. Farmers also associate the Mid-Autumn Festival weather with the mid-year harvest. It is said that the mid-autumn moon is bright, and the year will be ripe. If the moon is not seen on a cloudy or rainy mid-autumn night, it will affect the Lantern Festival in the following year, saying that it will rain and snow all night, and the Lantern Festival will be greatly reduced. Therefore, there are agricultural proverbs in the suburbs: "Mid-autumn moon is ripe in the coming year", "Clouds cover the mid-autumn moon, and rain lights up the lantern." (Shangyuan Festival is the Lantern Festival), "It's raining on August 15th, and the lights are lit in the snow on the 15th of the first month".
Time flies. Today's life is like sweet and mellow osmanthus honey wine in memory. Seeing all kinds of moon cakes is dazzling, but it has long lost its interest. Only the old things that are silent in my mind are still left in my memory for a long time ...
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