Laba Festival in China 2019 -Know about China

The Lama Temple ( Yonghe Palace） is a temple and monastery of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism located in Dongcheng District, Beijing, China. The building and artwork of the temple is a combination of Han Chinese and Tibetan styles.

Laba Festival（simplified Chinese: 腊八）is the eighth day of the the last month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Ancient Chinese have the tradition of offering sacrifices to ancestors and gods, praying for good harvest and good fortune in Laba. The two most important traditions associated with Laba Festival in this day and age are: eating Laba porridge,and praying for peace and good health in the coming year.

Laba Festival is also the day when Buddha Sakyamuni became enlightened, which is one of the great festivals of Buddhism. In some areas, there is a custom of eating Laba porridge, whose ingredients combines at least 8 different ingredients, based on the auspicious number in Buddhism. The earliest form of this dish was cooked with red beans and has since developed into many different kinds. It is mainly made up of many kinds of rice, beans, peanuts, dried fruit, lotus seeds, etc. People from north of China prefer to use glutinous rice, red beans, red dates, lotus seeds, walnuts, pine nuts and other dried fruits in their porridge; whilst southerners enjoy a salty porridge prepared with rice, soybeans, peanuts, broad beans, taro, water chestnuts, walnuts, vegetables and diced meat.

The citizens who came to receive porridge from the temple, lined up a long team in front of the Lama Temple in Beijing. Some of them exclaimed: "Queuing for two hours, eating porridge for five minutes."

On the day of Laba Festival, many Buddhist temples in china will offer free Laba porridge. The Buddhists in China will come to the temple in the early morning to get the Laba porridge. According to the Beijing News, there were 98 barrels of porridge has been offered in this year, and about 8,500 citizens participated in the porridge praying activities. In order to get Laba porridge, some citizens came to the Lama Temple at 3 a.m. Beijing time to queue up.

Many Buddhist temples in China are busy preparing Laba porridge in the last month of the Chinese lunar calendar. They will spend all night to cook porridge . All the temples open its doors and offer the Laba porridge in the morning. People lined up in front of the temple to have a bowl of Laba porridge from the temple to get the blessing for families in the coming new year in Chinese lunar calendar.