Qing Ming Festival Recap (Beijing) (Nihao, Cupcake!)

Living in China, we often get days off for certain Chinese holidays. However, since there is such a disconnect between China's past traditions and its people of today, there isn't much to do to acknowledge or take part in these 'celebrations.' In a way, China is in the process of rediscovering and reconnecting with its past. In fact, it is my understanding that only in the past couple of years have they added back these ancient traditional holidays onto their national business calendar.

Qing Ming is one such holiday. Wanting to do more to participate in the local culture, something I've loved about living abroad in the past, I jumped at the chance to sign up for this class to make traditional Qing Ming pastries, as soon as I discovered it.

It turns out that the pastry school, The Fig Tree, is located only a block or two from our home and is run by the mother of a girl who rides on the same school bus as my two older sons! A good friend of my husband's, who was born in China, wanted to come along and bring his family. He admitted that even he wasn't familiar with this tradition. To his credit its origin is from a completely different part of the country than his hometown. Our Chinese teacher said that she does have a similar tradition in her province.

A LITTLE HISTORY

The following information is from the handout given out at The Fig Tree:

One of the traditional customs of the Qing Ming Festial was that no fire was to be lit on the day of or before Qing Ming and that everyone could only eat cold foods, without being able to use a fire to cook or warm the food. This custom had been traced back to two sources - the Cold Food Festival when people were prohibited from using fire to cook food for the whole month of March. And the story of the Qing Ming Festival. It has been theorized that at some point in history, the two traditons converged to become what we know as the Qing Ming Festival today.

Nowadays most people only know the Qing Ming Festival as a day where everyone is expected to go sweep their ancestor's graves, wherever they may be. Prepared foods including cold pastries have long been part of the sacrificial offereings brough to the ancestral gravew. The types of pastry offered vary greatly according ot regional differences.

However, in the Shan'xi region, rural families still make a pastry bearing the name of the hero Jie Zi Tui, who died for his principles and values. His admonition to his pupil king to be 'qing' (cliean, uncorrupted, and "ming" (brilliant) became the name of the holiday ordained to commemorate his death.

Here is our class in photos:

Putting on our chef hats.

Weighing and measuring out our ingredients.

Kneading the dough.

Shaping our various animals.

Top view of our classroom.

Our dough shapes ready for the steamer.

Here they are steaming in the steamer.

A close-up view.

After steaming, we painted them with ordinary food coloring.

Then we baked them in the oven for a few minutes.

And here's how they turned out.

The decorations of dots (sometimes with clusters of five) are the traditional way of painting these breads in our Chinese tutors province.

While mine were still soft, I threaded some string through them by poking a hole (making a tunnel) with a sharp pencil. I now have them hanging in my house for decorations.

To see all of our creatures, go to this post.

They all turned out pretty cute, huh? It was a very fun afternoon and a great activity for the kids.

For a HOW TO tutorial to make your own Qing Ming inspired pretzels at home, go to SIMPLE AS THAT blog where my edible craft was featured.

COMING UP ON THE BLOG

*Sunday, April 17 - Alphanumeric Blog Hop for fun! This one is hosted by blog friend, Mel from her blog, I Speak Melsh. Stay tuned for more details. This one sounds very, very interesting...

ONE LITTLE WORD Blog Hop

*May 1 - OLW Monthly Blog Hop (One on 1) - I host this blog hop every month on the 1st. It is a blog hop for students of Ali Edwards' One Little Word class at Big Picure Classes. You can still sign up for the class as well as the blog hop (if you are a student). For the class, go to BigPictureClasses.com and for the blog hop, go to the OLW classroom message boards and there is information on how to sign-up in the Chit Chat section.

FAMILY x 12 Mini Blog Hop

* May 5 I will have a mini blog-hop to showcase my monthly personal project FAMILY x 12. If you are taking a monthly family photo (or would like to start) and would like to join us for a little support, motivation and light accountability, leave me a comment or send me an email and I'll be in touch with the details. (A family photo can be whatever you define as family, even if that is just you and your spouse/partner or you and your cat [dogs count too]!)