Nian Gao - History

History

There are one myth and one historical fact about the history of Nian Gao. In the ancient China, there was a monster called “Nian”. It used to stay at the cave in the mountain; however, it would come out and hunt for animals when it was hungry. In winter, most of the animals went for hibernation. Nian had no other options; it had to go to the village and searched for human to fulfill hunger. Lots of people lived under the fear of Nian for decades. Until, there was a smart villager who named “Gao”. He assumed Nian would come down from the mountain and hunt again; therefore, he pre-made some pastry and put them in front of the door. As soon as Nian came down, it could not find any human to eat but it found some pastry instead. When it felt full, it went back to the mountain. When it was gone, the villagers came out and celebrated for the survival. From then on, the villagers made rice pastry every winter to prevent Nian to eat them. Since Gao invented the rice pastry, the villagers named the rice pastry as “Nian Gao”. In BC 770 to BC 221, China was divided into different small countries. There were two neighboring countries that fighting to each other every year, which are “Wu” and “Yue”. In Wu, there was prime minister called “Wu Zi Shui” helped the old emperor to build the wall. Before Wu Zi Shui died, he told the new emperor’s eunuch to dig the wall when the citizens were in hunger since he had buried lots of rice pastry until the wall. When Yue attacked Wu, Wu was in danger and the whole country was suffering from hunger. The eunuch remembered what Wu Zi Shui said, so he ordered the citizen to dig until the wall. The citizen was saved from what Wu Zi Shui had done for them. From that moment onwards, the citizen made rice pastry every year during Chinese New Year. There were two purposes for them to make rice pastry; one was to remembrance Wu Zi Shui and another reason was to celebrate Chinese New Year with relatives and friends. Nian Gao was made one of the older historical food in China. In 1974, there were some historian in Zhejiang discovered some wheat fossil. After several textural researches, they had confirmed that it was made seven thousands years ago.