The flavor of the New Year in Hainan Island

Ding'an People's New Year's Day to eat vegetables and rice. Photo by Hainan Daily reporter Zhang Jie.

　　China's food culture is broad and profound, and the dishes, pastries and snacks that appear during the Spring Festival are rich in categories and exquisite in practice, which is the most direct presentation of the New Year flavor.

　　Chinese people will attend many family dinners in their lifetime, and the New Year's Eve dinner is undoubtedly the most profound and important one. After the "Little New Year", people who are rushing to the station, the dock, the airport, in order to catch up with the New Year's Eve dinner. In Hainan, many families "around the stove" to eat the New Year's Eve dinner, the whole family sit around the table, there are chicken, fish, shrimp, eggplant, vegetarian stew and other dishes, each dish is filled with good wishes.

　　The "top brand" of New Year's food has various methods

　　"If you want to say that the first dish of the Hainanese New Year is chicken!" Hainan folk custom expert Meng Lesheng introduced that during the Spring Festival, white cut chicken is a "frequent guest" on the table of Hainan people, chicken has the meaning of "good luck", and eating chicken can discuss a good prize.

　　People in Hainan often say, "No chicken, no banquet." As the "top dish" of the Spring Festival file, chicken has attracted special attention at the end of the year. In the lunar month, the first thing two Hainan locals say when they meet is likely to be "is the New Year chicken delicious?"

　　In Haikou, Wenchang and other places, the soft-boiled chicken has always been a "fixed team" for the New Year's Eve dinner. The practice of "soft-boiled chicken" is both a test and a tribute - it is not a good chicken, as long as it is made into " soft-boiled chicken". Wenchang people's favorite is to eat worms or grass seeds for free-range chicken, in the pot before cooking on the chicken body with sea salt, in the water to garlic, ginger slices to enhance the smell, after the pot of cold water (sometimes added ice) "tight meat", and then cut into pieces. White cut chicken with golden color, smooth skin and tender meat, delicious fragrance and original flavor. The "saucer" (dipping sauce) is the soul of the chicken. It is usually made of minced garlic, ginger, oil, soy sauce, small green orange, etc., which not only enhances the taste, but also plays a role in resolving the greasy.

　　Boiled chicken soup, Hainanese do not waste, used to cook rice. The rice absorbs the essence of the soup, becomes full and oily, and then is kneaded into a ball of rice balls, also called "Fanzhen", meaning reunion. Holding rice balls in the left hand and chicken in the right hand is one of the most classic ways to eat during the Chinese New Year.

　　The same is to eat chicken, Wanning people prefer a stronger physique "capon" (capon). Chen Shaojun, a resident of Wancheng Town in Wanning City, introduced that the locals prepare New Year's goods, and will buy the "capon" home about 20 days before the Spring Festival, and then put it in the cage to fatten. On New Year's Eve, every family kills chickens, whose chickens are fatter, and when they are sent to worship their ancestors, they all have more face.

　　Hainan people eat chicken during the Spring Festival, not only soft-boiled chicken, coconut chicken, betel nut chicken, salt baked chicken, yellow skin chicken, coffee chicken, pork belly wrapped chicken, etc., cooking methods are varied, regional characteristics are obvious.

　　Why do people in Hainan love chicken so much? Chickens are almost the best and most common type of poultry to keep, explains Meng Lesheng. "The cost of raising chickens is small, and no matter how difficult the poor families in the past, they have to find a way to raise a chicken to kill the New Year, so slowly formed a traditional custom, which has been handed down."

　　In addition to loving to eat, you must also know how to eat. Hainan people eat chicken in the New Year, each part of the "mouth color" : chicken head represents the leader, generally clip to the family elders to eat; Chicken feet have the meaning of "grasping" money in the New Year, to the main labor force at home to eat; Young students eat chicken wings and wish to fly high.

A resident of Qionghai shows a mackerel he just bought. Photo by special correspondent Meng Zhongde.

　　People have different preferences when they eat from the sea

　　Hainan Island is surrounded by the sea, and seafood is essential in the New Year's Eve dinner.

　　Located in Wenchang, Qionghai, Wanning and other places in the east of Qiongdao, local residents have to prepare a dish of mackerel for the Spring Festival reception. The quality of mackerel in Wenchang Puqian, Wenchang Qinglan, Wanning Wuchang and other places is good. After entering the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, people often drive to the pier to buy the whole thing home.

　　Feng Xueqiong, 40, a Tanka fisherman from Wenchang, started fishing for mackerel with her father when she was 16. In his opinion, the most classic way to cook mackerel in the New Year is to fry it. Heat a pan with oil and add a finger thick fillet of mackerel. As the temperature rises, the oil seeps out of the fillet, making a sizzling sound. The fried mackerel fillet is golden on both sides, the bone crisp meat is crisp, and it is layered with a poke with chopsticks.

　　What many people don't know is that in addition to fried mackerel, mackerel balls are also a popular New Year dish in the east of Hainan island. Mackerel has a lot of spines and is perfect for fish balls. Scrape out the fish with an iron spoon, chop and add salt, pepper, egg white, etc., stir well, then squeeze out the yuanxiao sized fish balls. In the area of Wanning Dazhou Island, fishermen use locally produced seaweed and mackerel balls to cook soup, ball fragrance, soup fresh, delicious, really a seafood.

　　In the west of Hainan Island, the favorite seafood for Chinese New Year is red fish and muraenesox cinereus. Danzhou residents have a long history of eating red fish. In the local folk song, there is a saying that "Majing (Baimajing) red fish fragrance breaks the pot". Danzhou native Wu Lili remembers that as a child, she and her siblings struggled to eat dried red fish. Every winter, her mother would buy a red fish, wash it, marinate it and hang it outdoors to dry until the Spring Festival, when she would cut off a few pieces with a knife. Today, she lives in other places and receives dried red fish sent by her family every lunar month. "Braised pork belly with red fish and braised pork ribs with red fish are my favorite New Year dishes." Wu Lili said that the salty taste of dried red fish is a classic New Year flavor in her heart.

　　In Changjiang Li Autonomous County, muraenesox cinereus is a classic ingredient for local people to make New Year dishes. muraenesox cinereus is a slender fish with elastic flesh and gelatinous skin that people love to braise with various ingredients to create a tangy fish soup. Boiled muraenesox cinereus with sour melon skin, fried duck with muraenesox cinereus, braised pork belly with muraenesox cinereus. Because of the popularity of these dishes, Changjiang people visit relatives and friends during the Spring Festival, sometimes carrying "muraenesox cinereus net" as a greeting gift.

　　In Baisha, Wuzhishan, Qiongzhong and other places that do not rely on the sea, the Li family often uses fish tea to entertain relatives and friends who visit during the Spring Festival. Fish tea is not tea, more appropriately called "fish acid", this food is made from fresh fish, cooked rice and koji fermentation, need to be prepared half a month in advance.

　　In recent years, with the improvement of living standards, Hainan people have more and more kinds of seafood on the Spring Festival table. Steamed crab, steamed grouper, white fried prawns, stir-fried whelks and so on have become more common New Year dishes.

Cress, bean curd bamboo, vermicelli, etc. Photo by Zhang MAO of Hainan Daily.

　　"Exclusive dishes", passed down from generation to generation

　　In addition to the chicken and different kinds of fish that people like to eat, some cities and counties in Hainan have some special New Year dishes that are very popular with the locals. Most of them are local specialties.

　　Dongshan sheep from the Dongshanling area of Wanning, fat meat, delicious, white soup without mutton, whether it is boiled, braised, or dry sauteed, are very delicious. During the Spring Festival, Wanning people often eat hot pot with eastern goats and vegetables. In Dongfang City, Basuo, Datian and other towns, there are many people will slaughter a black goat before the Spring Festival. They boil a pot of soup with sheep bones or mutton as the soup base for eating hot pot on New Year's Eve.

　　Approaching the Spring Festival, smoke rises on Xinqiao South Road in Lincheng town, Lingao County. Dozens of Suckling pig shops here hang freshly baked Suckling pigs in front of the door, and there is an endless stream of tourists to buy them. A plate of golden roast Suckling pig occupies the absolute "C position" on the dinner table of Lingao People's New Year's Eve. Put down chopsticks, put on gloves, pick up a piece of fat and thin roast Suckling pig, dip in white sugar, slowly chew, that bite crisp and sweet, is the most recognized by the local people. In Tunchang, a black pig brings people black pork sausage, fried pork ribs, dried black pork and other delicacies. Among them, deep-fried ribs, pan-fried pork belly, etc. are the hard dishes on the Spring Festival table of Tunchang people.

　　Hainanese people will also cook some ordinary looking vegetarian dishes and side dishes during the Spring Festival. Recently, Hainan Daily all media reporter in Haikou Jinmao Wenhua market saw that celery, eggplant and other vegetables on the stall are quite popular.

　　"Haikou area on the first day of the vegetarian pot, vermicelles, beancurd bamboo, fungus, bean sprouts, celery, etc., are the raw materials for making vegetarian pot." Meng Lesheng introduced that because "qin" and "qin" homophonic, there is the meaning of "hard work can get rich", Hainan has the custom of eating celery during the Spring Festival. At the same time, in the Hainan dialect, the pronunciation of "eggplant" is similar to "strong", and eating eggplant means that "a year is stronger than a year", so some people will also do salted fish eggplant pot, fried eggplant and other dishes.

　　Wanning people often eat vegetables during the Spring Festival are celery and Allium macrostemon. Allium macrostemon has many roots, and its white root system resembles the beard of the longevity man. Eating Allium macrostemon in the New Year is intended to pray for the health and longevity of the family and peace.

　　There are also some "exclusive dishes" that are not on the list of common New Year dishes, nor are they famous dishes, but they concentrate family affection and precipitate memories. Ms. Li, who lives in Chengmai Fushan Town, introduced that her family's New Year's Eve dinner "popular dish" is ox bone papaya soup, "Listen to my husband said that this dish is the first done by his grandfather and has been done for decades."

　　Lingao Li Han told reporters that their family has a special New Year's Eve dinner dish - dried radish scrambled eggs. "Every New Year's Eve, I will do this dish. The raw radish is dried by myself, and the eggs are also my own, fried with peanut oil, which is especially fragrant." He said that this dish is a very good meal, the family love to eat, has been the mother to do before, after the mother suffered from lumbar disc herniation, he has done for nearly two years.

　　A flatbread shaped like an envelope, how much homesickness

　　During the Spring Festival, families will not only prepare special dishes, but also serve many pastries and snacks to entertain guests. Often, the big meal has just finished, and began to drink tea and snacks, the mouth is busy.

　　Like many places on the mainland, people in Hainan also eat Jingguo during the New Year. Jingguo is made of rice flour, white sugar, honey, etc., into a strip, the surface is wrapped in a layer of white icing, because of this, there is a "silver wrapped in gold". The taste of the fruit is crisp and sweet, and the taste is endless when you bite into it. Winter melon candy is a New Year snack in the memory of many Hainan people. In some places, wax melon candy is used as an offering, and after the ancestor worship ceremony, the wax melon candy removed from the eight immortal table becomes a snack for children. The translucent wax melon strips are coated with a thin layer of sugar, which is particularly sweet and remains sweet in the mouth for a long time.

　　In Wenchang, Qionghai and other places, sugar tributs, crisp dumplings, and flatbread like envelopes are the most classic New Year snacks. Local people will fry crispy dumplings on the eve of Spring Festival. Crispy dumplings are shaped like dumplings and have a variety of fillings, each with its own recipe. They are generally ground peanuts, sesame, white sugar mixed evenly for filling, in addition to red bean filling, mung bean filling, salty filling and so on.

　　Flatbread like an envelope, the name sounds very story-telling. In the 1930s and 1940s, the number of people who went to South Asia to work in the town of Wenchang soared, and people who were drifting away cleverly integrated their thoughts into the making of dim sum. They use the white and yellow pancakes as letter paper, and the sesame seeds flowing like a full of affectionate words, silently telling the homesickness of the wanderers. Different kinds of "letters", passed down by artisans from generation to generation, have become an indispensable New Year flavor, reminding people to cherish the time of reunion with their loved ones.

　　Hainan also has a popular Spring Festival snack, their name is "gan", including dried squid, beef jerky, dried blood eel, etc., people will eat them as a dish, or as a snack. In Wanning, Hainan Province, locals start buying fresh squid and drying it every December. In the lunar calendar, high-quality dried squid with a diameter of more than 20 centimeters can be sold for two to three hundred yuan a catty. Before eating, locals will roast pieces of dried squid over a charcoal fire for a while to release the flavor of the fish, then tear them into thin strips while they are hot and chew them in their mouths. Jinshan beef jerky in Wenchang and Xinlong beef jerky in Dongfang City are also well-known local snacks.

　　Many people have the impression that zongzi is the food eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival, but in some villages of Danzhou, Hainan Province, villagers also make zongzi during the Spring Festival. "We eat zongzi on important festivals, including the Dragon Boat Festival and the Spring Festival." Huang Linfeng, a villager in Lizha village, Nada Town, Danzhou City, said that the locals have a special love for zongzi, and they must eat zongzi every Spring Festival.

　　Whether it is mountain delicacies, or pastries and snacks, every kind of Spring Festival food in Hainan contains people's love for life and good expectations for the New Year, perhaps, this is also the reason why the New Year is attractive. (Reporter Song Lingyun)