Beijing taxi driver Lu Xingping usually eats out when he gets hungry during his shift, but on Thursday, he drove the 30 minutes back home just to have lunch with his family.

That was because the day was lichun, one of the 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese lunar calendar that literally means "the beginning of spring".

Lu's family tradition for the festival is making and eating chunbing, or "spring pancakes", which are thin rolls stuffed with vegetables such as bean sprouts, Chinese chives, cabbage and carrots.

"It is a tradition, and it doesn't feel right if I don't have chunbing on that day," said Lu, adding that his family's version of chunbing is his favorite, although there are restaurants offering diners various spring pancakes for the festival.

In Beijing, people use the term yaochun, literally "bite the spring", to describe the custom of eating chunbing on lichun, which represents good fortune for the coming year, Lu said.

Restaurants in many northern cities often start to prepare their pancakes well in advance, in order to meet the surge in demand once the festival begins.

Lichun used to be the most important festival in China, because Chinese people believed it was the time when spring begins and seeds are sowed, according to Liu Yida, cultural writer and deputy president of the Beijing Literature and Art Association.

The celebrations for lichun vary subtly from the north to the south, Liu said, because of the difference in climate.

Spring pancakes are must-haves on this day in the north, and bean sprouts and Chinese chives used to be most important ingredients for the delicacies, due to their easy accessibility.

In the south, on the other hand, people tend to eat fresh vegetables instead of spring pancakes on lichun, because they traditionally had more choice. Some even eat spring rolls with fresh vegetables as fillings.

Nowadays, due to improved farming techniques, vegetables can appear on people's tables all year around.

But other traditions are observed including trying to place an egg vertically on a table for good luck, while in some northern areas people eat radish for the same purpose, Liu said.

Andres Jimenez, executive chef with Ritz-Carlton Sanya, Yalong Bay, said the tradition of having certain foods during certain festivals is not exclusive to China.

For example, in the United States people have turkey for Thanksgiving and in Israel, people eat symbolic foods including lamb, eggs, herbs and vegetables for Passover Seder.

He believes those traditional foods that people come to associate with holidays often have a story of their own, which is why they become tradition.

Also, there are some foods people eat only during the festivals, so they will often wait the entire year to eat those particular foods, he said.

liuzhihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 02/09/2016 page3)