Zhangjiajie Glutinous Rice Pounded Ciba
In Tujia and Miao villages, a widespread New Year custom is "pounding baba." Baba can be made from pure glutinous rice, millet, a mix of glutinous rice and millet, or a blend of regular and glutinous rice. There is also a type made by grinding non-glutinous and glutinous rice into powder and pressing it into carved wooden molds with patterns, commonly called "tuoba." Some people who love to chat...
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In the Tujia villages and Miao townships, a custom of "pounding cakes" during the New Year is widely popular. There are cakes made of pure glutinous rice, cakes made of millet, cakes made from a mixture of glutinous rice and millet, and cakes pounded from a mixture of regular rice and glutinous rice. In addition, there are cakes made by grinding non-glutinous rice and glutinous rice into flour and pouring it into a wooden carved mold with patterns and designs carved inside, commonly known as "molded cakes." Some particular Tujia families even wrap them in pairs with smartweed bamboo leaves and put sesame and sugar inside the cakes, which taste both sweet and fragrant, commonly called "smartweed leaf cakes."
The Tujia people have long had a saying: "On the twenty-eighth, pound cakes." As the Spring Festival approaches, at the end of the twelfth lunar month, every household pounds glutinous rice cakes. As for what is meant by pounding glutinous rice cakes, according to local gazetteers: "It is glutinous rice pounded into a paste in a stone trough, then pressed into a round shape, shaped like a full moon. The large ones are about one chi five in diameter, ordinary ones about four cun or so, and three to eight fen thick." Pounding glutinous rice cakes is a physically demanding labor, generally done by young men. Two people stand facing each other, first kneading then pounding, and even on icy and snowy days they work up a sweat. Making the cakes also requires care: hands are coated with beeswax or tea oil, first portions are pinched out, then pressed with the hand or a wooden board. They must be made jade-round and smooth, with attention to beauty.
There is also knowledge in eating the cakes. Generally they are roasted over charcoal fire, called roasted cakes; cooked with green vegetable soup as cake slices, called boiled cakes; and stir-fried with cured meat, called stir-fried cakes. When many cakes are made and cannot all be eaten at once, they are soaked in clean water in a water vat, which allows them to be stored for two to three months without spoiling, so there are cakes to eat at rice-planting time.
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