Hello Everybody：
My name is 辛戈. I am from India and I am studying clinical medicine in Shanxi Medical University. Today I will talk about the winter solstice (Dongzhi) festival.
This festival celebrates on the winter solstice, making and eating dumplings is a custom in the northern part of China. In the Western calendar, the Winter Solstice falls on December 21 or December 22 when the night is longest and the day is shortest in the northern hemisphere. In this year this festival will celebrate on the 21 December. The Winter solstice festival is a traditional holiday still celebrated by some that has a long history and certain customs.
In past imperial eras, the Winter Solstice Festival was very important, but now it remains a relatively important festival. People went to the clan tombs to offer food and drink to their ancestor's spirits, clean the tombs, and work to maintain them. Then they gathered in the evening afterwards for hot dumplings and drinks. Nowadays, in some regions of China, some families still gather together to eat a special meal and worship their ancestors.
Eating steaming hot dumplings with friends or family and eating food with special high yang herbs and spices is still a custom in northern China on the day of the winter solstice. In the past, the northern China where it can get bitterly cold, the people lacked sufficient warm clothing and adequate heating, so they ate hot food and drank hot liquids to stay warm. People believed that when the days were short, there was insufficient Yang energy, and they tried to eat high Yang foods according to Chinese medicinal cuisine principals. Besides, this helped the people stave off illness and disease and stay warm. It helped them adapt to the onset of winter and buoyed their mood during the darkest days of the year.
