Yixing black rice

Legend has it: Mulian's mother suffered in the eighteen-storey Hell's Hungry Ghost Road. After practicing the Tao, Mulian went to great lengths to get permission to visit her mother in hell, but every time she prepared food, she was robbed by hungry ghost jailers along the way. Mulian tried her best to feed her starving mother, so she often wandered in the mountains. One day (at that time, it was the eighth day of the fourth lunar month), Mulian, in desperation and irritability, inadvertently picked the leaves from the dwarf tree beside her on the mountain and put them in her mouth to chew bored. She found that the leaves of this tree were fragrant and delicious, and the juice was black. Mulian thought that if she soaked rice with this leaf juice and cooked it into black rice and sent it to her mother, she would not be robbed by the jailer. So Mulian took the picked leaves home, mashed them, soaked rice in leaf juice, cooked them into black rice, and sent them to her mother. Sure enough, the hungry ghost jailers stopped fighting, and Mulian's mother finally had a full meal. Mu Lian finally saved her mother from the hungry ghost road. In order to praise Mulian's filial piety, every family in Yixing eats black rice on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, which has been passed down to this day. The leaves of southern candle (commonly known as "black rice grass" in Yixing), which makes black rice, mainly grow in the hilly and mountainous areas in the south of Yixing. The rice used to make black rice is mainly glutinous rice, mixed with some japonica rice, which is particularly fragrant and delicious after cooking. The custom of eating black rice in Yixing has a long history and has been passed down from generation to generation. By the Ming Dynasty, the pharmacologist Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica stated: "Pick the leaves of Candles, mash them, soak them in water to get juice, and cook japonica rice or glutinous rice to make a dark rice. If you take it for a long time, you can lose your weight and improve your eyesight, keep your black hair in your face, benefit your qi and prolong your life." "Yixing County Records" also records: "Eating black rice on the eighth day of April, and acting on this day is called' black rice offering'. ..... It is also said that Mulian cooked black rice by soaking the leaves of a green tree (a southern candle) in glutinous rice, and saved his mother from a ghost pawn. This custom has been passed down to this day. " Yixing black rice is a local specialty food in Yixing, and it is also a unique folk culture created by Yixing people. It has distinctive local characteristics and has a great influence around Yixing. This product has the effects of invigorating spleen and kidney, relieving cough, calming nerves, improving eyesight, blackening hair, etc., and is suitable for dietotherapy and tonic for people with weak constitution.
Reprinted with attribution： https://cnlocality.com/(Chinese Specialty Products)