[Today’s Focus] "Shake" a Happy Year! Yin’s Lantern Festival in Haicheng ushered in the busiest time of the year.

Sweet-scented osmanthus stuffing is wrapped in walnuts, and the rice is like a pearl well. "This is the scene in which the Qing Dynasty poets described the hot sale of the Majia Lantern Festival in Beijing, and it is also appropriate to describe the Lantern Festival of Yin Huilin’s family in Haicheng. During the Spring Festival every year, Daxing Street in Haicheng is crowded with people, and hundreds of people line up in a 100-meter long line in order to buy two bags of Yin’s Lantern Festival in Haicheng, which are made by traditional production techniques. This period of time is also the busiest day of the year for Yin Huilin’s family.

On February 16th, the seventh day of the first month, at 8 o’clock in the morning, Yin Huilin’s house was already bustling in front of the Yuanxiao store in Daxing Street, Haicheng, and the sales staff were as busy as a bee. The truck sent a batch of Yuanxiao, loaded it with empty boxes and went back to the factory in Wangshi Town to pick up another batch of Yuanxiao. This one came back and forth, and the Yuanxiao in the store was basically sold out.

On the other hand, in Yin Huilin’s factory in Daiqian Village, Wangshi Town, workers are busy shaking Yuanxiao. Yin Huilin said that their family only sells Yuanxiao for four months in winter in a year, and now it is the busiest time. "On weekdays, the sales volume is about 400 kilograms. The busiest time is three or four days before the fifteenth day of the first month. The daily sales volume can reach more than 2,500 kilograms, and there are more than 30 people at most. These are the old masters who have worked with me for more than ten years. They come to help when they are busiest every year."

In Yinjia’s Lantern Festival factory, there is a "treasure" handed down by ancestors, a stone roller with a history of hundreds of years, which is still in use today. Yin Huilin said that in recent years, this stone roller has been constantly upgraded. From the beginning, it needed people to pull it, and now it has been changed to electricity operation. This roller, which weighs about 5 tons and is over 100 years old, is the "baby" of Yin’s family. It also witnessed the inheritance and development of Yin’s Lantern Festival.

"The key to our delicious Yuanxiao is that we still maintain the’ old craft’, and the glutinous rice noodles used to make Yuanxiao are still ground out." Yin Huilin, a non-genetic inheritor of the traditional production technique of Yin’s Lantern Festival in Haicheng, told reporters that the nutrients of the milled rice noodles will not be lost. Therefore, he has always maintained the traditional method of milling rice with a stone mill since he made Yuanxiao.

The 67-year-old Yin Huilin began to market the Yuanxiao craft handed down by Yin Jiazu in 1979, and it was well received as soon as it went on the market. For more than 40 years, Yin Huilin and his family have been making Lantern Festival with their conscience, and the real good quality has also won a good reputation. In the choice of raw materials, the glutinous rice used by Yin’s Lantern Festival is all superior glutinous rice. The peanuts, sesame seeds, peach kernels and so on in the stuffing should not be vague, and they are all full-grained grains of the year. After the Lantern Festival is shaken, it is necessary to pick out the small and broken ones, so that the Lantern Festival produced by layers of checks is soft in skin and sticky in filling after cooking, and it tastes sweet but not greasy.

Nowadays, the Lantern Festival made by Yin Huilin’s family is not only loved by Haicheng citizens, but also taken to all parts of the country by many people. Some old Haicheng people who live in other places also come to his house to buy Yuanxiao after returning to Haicheng on holidays. "For so many years, the reason why many foreign’ Old Haicheng’ still loves my old craft is that I hope to appreciate the deep nostalgia and affection while tasting the sweetness of Yuanxiao." Yin Huilin said.

Original title: "[Today’s Focus]" Shake "a Happy Year! Yin’s Lantern Festival in Haicheng ushered in the busiest time of the year.

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