Locally, people made offerings to the Kitchen God at the winter solstice: a small ceremony at the winter solstice, and a grand one on Little New Year's Eve.
After they finished rolling the rice balls, Lin Xiuqing cooked them and filled four bowls, setting two beneath the paper images of the Kitchen God and Kitchen Goddess, and two by the door.
There were also tangerines, olives, gold joss paper and paper ingots, three cups of tea, and three cups of rice wine. Two flowers also had to be placed in the incense burner.
There was a saying: "Tangerines are round, olives are pointed; once the Kitchen God and Kitchen Goddess eat them, they'll ascend to heaven."
During the crackdown on feudal superstition a few years earlier, nobody in the village had dared do any of this. In the years since reform and opening-up, however, it had sprung up again, and people had gradually picked up some of the old customs.
Once she had arranged all the offerings, Lin Xiuqing lit eight sticks of incense. After bowing three times, she placed three sticks in the incense burner before the Kitchen God and Kitchen Goddess, still using her left hand.
Then she went to the doorway, where a slender bamboo pole had already been stuck into the ground beside the stool holding the two bowls of rice balls. She bowed three times and inserted another three sticks.
The remaining two went beside the door, one on the left and one on the right.
Once she was done, she told Ye Yaodong to set off the firecrackers.
By then, firecrackers were also going off intermittently throughout the village.
Ye Chenghai from next door excitedly snatched up the job of setting off the firecrackers, but unexpectedly, he failed to run far enough away after