Eating tangyuan

In places such as Shanghai, people eat tangyuan, a kind of stuffed small dumpling ball made of glutinous rice flour, to celebrate Winter Solstice.

Eating mutton and vermicelli soup

In Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, people call midwinter the "Ghost Festival". On that day, it is customary for people there to drink mutton and vermicelli soup and eat the dumplings in the soup. They give the midwinter soup a strange name - "brain" - and share it with their neighbors.

Eating rice cakes

During the Winter Solstice, Hangzhou residents traditionally eat rice cakes. In the past, before the approach of the winter solstice, every household would make the cakes to worship their ancestors or use as gifts for relatives and friends. Today, though fewer families eat homemade cakes, people there still buy rice cakes for the Winter Solstice Festival.

Offering nine-layer cakes to ancestors

Taiwan residents keep the custom of offering nine-layer cakes to their ancestors. People with the same surname or family clan gather at their ancestral temples to worship their ancestors in order of their ages. After the sacrificial ceremony, there is always a grand banquet.

Eating red-bean and glutinous rice

In some regions south of the Yangtze River on the first day of Winter Solstice, the whole family gets together to have a meal made of red bean and glutinous rice to drive away ghosts and other evil things.