Festival greets summer with traditional flair

Chinese eat seasonally, and this is the time when people living in the Yangtze River Delta are really feasting on a smorgasbord of rice varieties. Choices include black rice, five-color rice and broad bean rice. Black rice is made by immersing brown rice in the juice of the leaves of blueberry shrubs, commonly known as "black tree" by the locals. Tradition has it that eating black rice on lixia can enhance one's immune system, prevent heat stroke, weight loss and mosquito bites in summer. Five-color rice is cooked with red, black, green and mung beans, as well as soybeans, and mixed with white rice.

Examining the local chronicles from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in the eastern region of Zhejiang province reveals tidbits of the customs that now constitute the main body of the later Lixia Festival.

Deqing county chronicled the custom of weighing children on lixia when families go for an outing. In modern days, a large scale more than 1 meter long is hung on a small rattan chair, allowing the child in the chair to be weighed safely. Lixia weighing is meant to remind people to keep fit and avoid weight loss in summer, unlike nowadays when so many feel the need to lose weight. Locals believe that after this weighing ceremony, children can survive and thrive in the summer heat.

A more interesting food custom on lixia is the way children eat and play with eggs. Parents put boiled eggs into small mesh bags, and hang them on their children's chests. Egg fighting starts when a child goes to meet their pals, each holding one egg, and colliding until one side breaks the shell. The last winner is the "Egg King", and the broken eggs will be eaten by the competitors.

Xia Yanming, 43, who now resides in Beijing, originates from Taizhou, Zhejiang. He recalls days during his childhood when his parents kept "forcing" him to eat duck eggs on Start of Summer. The memory remains sharply focused to this day, with the consequence that he is not particularly fond of any meal or recipe containing eggs. Xia, however, admits that this custom has helped family bonding.