Laba Festival is held on the 8th day of the 12th lunar month on the Chinese calendar. It is a festival that started as a sacrificial offering to ancestors. It is a traditional festival of China that is regarded as the preface of the Spring Festival.It was also a time for the ancient Chinese to pray to heaven and earth that there would be a bountiful harvest. Many people hoped for good luck as well for the coming year.
There is a legend of how the Laba Festival began,and before the Qin Dynasty Laba festival was a celebration of the new harvest.After Buddhism spread to China during the first century AD, the festival was used as commemoration of Gautama Buddha's enlightenment at the age of 35. In the Qing dynasty, ceremonies for the Laba festival would have been held in the Yonghe Temple in Beijing. The majority Han Chinese have long followed the tradition of eating Laba rice porridge on the Laba Festival.
Traditionally, the Laba rice porridge is the most important element of the festival. Generally, the porridge contains eight ingredients which can include glutinous rice, red beans, millet, Chinese sorghum, peas, dried lotus seeds and some other ingredients, such as dried dates, chestnut meat, walnut meat, almond, peanut, etc. Another custom is the soaking of Laba garlic. Garlic is soaked in vinegar for more than twenty days starting from Laba festival. Then when the Chinese New Year comes, the garlic and vinegar is used alongside jiaozi on the table.
