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| Winter solstice [Photo from wuxinews.com.cn] |
Wuxi people attach great importance to the winter solstice (December 22 of every year), considering "the winter solstice as important as Spring Festival”.
On the eve of winter solstice, all family members get together to have winter solstice dinner. If someone is not able to return home, families will leave a seat, put a pair of chopsticks on the table, and symbolically hold some food to express their longing for the person.
Before dinner, people will offer sacrifices to ancestors. Then they will take the dishes back to eat before cooking them once again. If they do not do this, a superstitious belief holds that their memory may get worse. People will put beans in the meal, called "gold rice", and put two cooked chestnuts in the bowl in advance, clip the chestnuts out of the folder in dinner, which is called "clamp ingot".
On winter solstice morning, people will eat rice dumplings made at the previous night. It is said that the winter solstice was New Year's Day in the Zhou Dynasty, so Wuxi locals get one year older after eating the winter solstice dinner, a belief commonly known as tiansui.
