The most important festival in the twelfth month of the lunar year, or before Spring Festival, is Laba. Literally it means the eighth of the twelfth month of the Chinese lunar year.
Almost all Chinese festivals are closely related to food and Laba is no exception. On Laba, the coldest day of the year, people eat Laba porridge.
It is said the tradition of eating Laba porridge originates from Buddhism. Laba porridge is also called "seven treasures and five flavors porridge". The land of China is so vast that people in different parts of the country prefer to have different grains and fruits in their porridge.
People in the north like to use glutinous rice, millet, red beans, etc in their poriidge; while people in coastal Shandong Province like to add peanuts and jujube. Beijingers pay so much attention to food that they put more than 20kinds of things in the porridge, such as chestnuts, walnuts, almonds, raisins, longans, etc. People in the south like to make salty Laba Porridge. While Shaanxi and Henan folk like to add maize. In some places, people add bacon and mutton so the porridge is a bit meaty. In Guanzhong area, the central Shaanxi plain, people often use 8 vegetables to make a meat sauce for noodles, which is called Laba noodle. In the Tongguan area near Xi'an, people like to add hot peppers-the resulting food is called Laba noodle soup.
Whenever the night of seventh in the twelfth month of lunar year comes, people start to get busy preparing their own regional porridge. They cook it over a slow fire from midnight until the next morning.
During the coldest time of Laba, families sit around and have a bowl of warm Laba porridge, tasting the different dry fruits and beans and talking about all the good news of the year. Family happiness and warmth are all reflected at such a moment.
