The full grain festival is a festival for the Han people to symbolize the harvest in the new year.
The "Warehouse Filling Festival" is also called "Tiancang Festival" because of the homonym of "filling" and "sky". There are two kinds of warehouses in Xiaotian. The 20th day of the first lunar month is Xiaotian Cang, and the 25th day of the first lunar month is God Cang, which is a traditional folk festival. Some people say that Tiancang Festival is a day of offering sacrifices to stars, while others say it is a day of offering sacrifices to the earth or grinding the gods.
On the other hand, the sky-mending festival is also called the sky-piercing festival. Before the Song Dynasty, the 23rd day of the first month was regarded as the wearing day. It is said that this day is the goddess' day to mend the sky. In ancient times, the volcano erupted in floods, and the beast eagle ran wild to feed the refugees, and the people were in dire straits. At this time, Nu Wa, known as the ancestor of mankind, collected five-color stones and smelted them day and night. After 7749 days of smelting, the broken sky was finally restored on the 25th of the first month. Nu Wa also cut off the four legs of the giant turtle to support the sky in all directions, and killed the beast, the giant eagle, and put the flood back, making the people live and work in peace and contentment. To commemorate Nu Wa, people eat pancakes on the 25th day of the first month, tie them up with red silk thread and throw them on the roof, which is called "mending the sky". Su Shi once wrote a poem: "A cake fills the sky", so the 25th day of the first month is also called "Tianchuan Festival" and "Tiancang Festival".
The so-called warehouse filling is to fill up the barn. At the dawn of this day, every family scattered screened cooking ashes on grain depots of different sizes in their own yards or threshing floors, and put some whole grains in them, symbolizing a bumper harvest of grains.
On the day of Grain Filling Festival, both grain merchants and rice vendors have to make sacrifices to the "God of Grain Storage". Cang Shen is a mouse, nicknamed "the star-consuming king", and "Tokyo Old Customs" says that it is "in charge of the mice in the warehouse". Rats have been called "rats" in the north since the end of the Five Dynasties Tang Dynasty (923-936). At that time, the warlord Kong Qian (that is, the Chancellor of the Exchequer) often used various excuses to search for the people's fat and paste, and set up a "surcharge" in addition to various exorbitant taxes, and added "consumption by birds and mice" to the "surcharge". For example, silk, cotton, silk, hemp and grain cost two liters per stone, forcing people to compensate for the losses of birds and mice in the warehouse. So rats are commonly called "rats" in the north. People hate rats in officialdom and rats in warehouses, but they are helpless. They can only pray for the attention of Cang Shen on Cang Li Festival, so that both grain and rice can be Man Cang, and rats can't "consume" too much.
Lighting is not allowed tonight. Because it is the day when mice marry women, we can't surprise them. Marrying a woman with a mouse has always been the traditional theme of folk New Year pictures or paper-cutting in China. The groom, bride, best man and guests of the mouse are just like human scenes. Although they all have narrow mouths and thin legs, they all wear red shirts and green pants, swaying in groups, grand and funny.
According to legend, a long time ago, there was drought in northern China for years, and the bare land was thousands of miles away, but the royal family did not care about the life of the Lebanese people. The imperial grain is still levied, which makes people complain. The warehouse officer guarding Li granary witnessed this tragic scene; Unbearable, he resolutely opened the imperial warehouse to help the victims. He knew that doing so violated the king's laws and the emperor would never forgive him. So he asked the people to carry the grain away, burned the imperial warehouse with a torch and burned himself alive. This day happens to be the 25th day of the first lunar month. Later generations filled the warehouses inside and outside the yard with first-class cooking ashes in memory of Yuan, a warehouse official who released grain to help the people, to show their memory of the warehouse official and hope for a good harvest in the new year. In this way, the custom of filling positions has been passed down from generation to generation.
In order to commemorate this granary official, later generations scattered plant ash into a circular granary every morning, some of which were decorated with lace and auspicious words, and sprinkled grains in the granary to symbolize the bumper harvest of grains, in order to express people's deep affection for filling the granary and saving the granary official. Now these customs have disappeared, but the story of filling warehouses has been passed down from generation to generation, reminding people to clean warehouses, dry seeds, renovate farm tools and prepare for spring ploughing from this day. However, later, the meaning of complement expanded and people gave it various other meanings.