Nutritious La Ba Zhou warm our hearts before Spring Festival

In Chinese traditional culture, the eighth day of the last lunar month each year is customarily called La Ba（腊八, December in lunar calendar is called “腊” and “eighth” is “八”）. There’s an old saying that “If ‘La Ba’ comes, can Spring Festival be far behind?”（过了腊八就是年）.

In 2010, “La Ba” is on Jan. 22nd, according to the lunar calendar. In Hangzhou and some other cities of China, there’s a traditional custom to dispatch “La Ba Zhou”（腊八粥, a kind of rice porridge with nuts and dried fruit）free of charge on this day.

The locals in Hangzhou considered having “La Ba Zhou” as a special prelude of Spring Festival. There are usually many organizations including communities, drugstores, temples or else to act as the suppliers to dispatch this special "gift" to the citizens.

The ingredients to make “La Ba Zhou” need to be elaborately selected, which contains glutinous rice（糯米）, dried jujube（红枣） and longan（桂圆）, together with lotus seed（莲子）, adzuki beans（赤豆）, dried grape（葡萄干）, peanuts（花生） and so on, more than 10 kinds. Consequently, the porridge is quite nutritious.