Year cakes

Year cakes

　　By the shores of Dongting Lake, the tradition of making "year cakes" has long been cherished, and Hanshou County is where this custom thrives most. As the Spring Festival approaches, households everywhere busily prepare these cakes. The men pound rice and grind the paste, the women tend the fire and steam the cakes, while the children help out with odd jobs. This goes on for ten days to half a month, with several bushels of rice used in the process. The finished cakes are stored in jars and buckets. These year cakes are made from a blend of glutinous rice and regular rice. The cake is soft and crumbly, shaped like a mooncake, and often decorated with patterns and designs that make it both appealing and delicious. For the people of Hanshou, year cakes are an inseparable part of life. When the New Year comes, the first thing you ask an acquaintance is, "How many year cakes have you made?" During the New Year visits, year cakes are an essential gift. They are even offered as offerings to ancestors. Many families eat various styles of year cakes for breakfast from the lunar December all the way to the spring planting season. Sometimes they’re eaten with vegetables and spicy sauce as “vegetable year cakes”; sometimes with sugar as “sweet year cakes”; sometimes cooked in sweet wine as “sweet wine year cakes”; and other times pan-fried or deep-fried as “oil year cakes.” With such variety, the more you eat, the more you love them. Legend has it that these cakes once served as rations for the rebel army of Yang Mo during the Southern Song Dynasty. Perhaps out of nostalgia for their fellow townsmen, the people of Hanshou have always held these cakes in high regard, maintaining the tradition unchanged for thousands of years. (Changde)