Buddhist temple in Sichuan offers ceremonial congee to celebrate traditional Laba Festival

Wenshu Monastery, a Buddhist temple in Chengdu City in southwest China's Sichuan Province, offered ceremonial congee to visitors on Tuesday to celebrate the traditional Laba Festival.

Falling on the eighth day of the 12th lunar month, the Laba Festival is commonly celebrated by cooking and eating congee made of at least eight ingredients like rice, red beans, peanuts, dry-dates, and lotus seeds.

Chengdu's Wenshu Monastery has a history of more than 1,000 years. This year, the temple has prepared 350,000 cups of congee for locals and tourists, served from Sunday to Tuesday.

The thick porridge is distributed for free as a symbol of good fortune for the upcoming spring.

"I didn't expect that I could celebrate the festival in the temple. But I happened to notice the temple was offering congee for free when walking on the street, so I dropped by. I feel warm after eating the congee, and everyone was lining up in a good manner, which in my opinion reflects how people greatly value this festival," said A Yishi, a tourist from southwest China's Yunnan Province.

"It's not salty at all, and it looks like oatmeal. So I think that it's not bad. Actually, we were looking for places to visit in Chengdu and this was one of the recommended ones because of the Buddhism culture. But we didn't know that there is a tradition about food and everything. So that's why we wanted to discover it even more," said Rafael Adrian, a visitor from Spain.

The Laba Festival has been widely celebrated in China since the Song Dynasty (960-1279), more than 1,000 years ago. Aside from eating congee, eating Laba garlic and a thorough house cleaning are also part of the festival's traditions.

Buddhist temple in Sichuan offers ceremonial congee to celebrate traditional Laba Festival

China has allocated 81 billion yuan (about 11.04 billion U.S. dollars) in subsidies for the country's trade-in promotion for 2025, said an official from the Ministry of Finance in Beijing on Wednesday. Fu Jinling, director of the Department of Economic Construction at the Chinese Ministry of Finance, said the ministry has expanded its subsidy program to cover a wider range of sectors and has also raised the funding standards for areas with significant financial needs and high public interest

"For instance, we will expand the support for equipment restoration to more fields like electronic information, production safety, and facility agriculture. We will expand the categories of home appliance products eligible for trade-in subsidies from eight to 12, and introduce new subsidies for purchasing new digital products such as mobile phones. We also raised the standards for subsidies for new energy public buses and power battery renewals, with the average subsidy per bus increased from 60,000 yuan (about 8,183.53 U.S. dollars) to 80,000 yuan (over 10,900 U.S. dollars)," said Fu.

By the end of 2024, China's central government had exhausted its 150 billion yuan (approximately $20.45 billion USD) allocation for trade-in consumption.

The Ministry of Finance also allocated another 150 billion yuan (about 20.45 billion U.S. dollars) for large-scale equipment restoration to local governments across the country, with the use clearly defined for specific projects.

China allocates 81 bln yuan for 2025 trade-in subsidies