The custom of making rice cakes has a long history in Jiaxing. At the end of the lunar year, there is a custom of making and eating rice cakes in rural areas. Every household will grind glutinous rice into powder to make rice cakes and give them as traditional gifts to relatives during the New Year. During the Spring Festival, it is a traditional custom in Tongxiang to make rice cakes by hand with a stone mortar. "Nian Gao" is homophonic with "Nian Gao", and making rice cakes during the New Year is a good word among the people, implying that the New Year will be higher. Rice cakes are also an indispensable offering on the New Year's worship table, and are also one of the best gifts for country people to give to relatives in the city. In rural Tongxiang, almost every family has to wash rice, grind flour and make rice cakes before the Spring Festival. This has become a major event for farmers to do during the New Year, and sometimes they have to be busy until New Year's Eve to complete it. Pounding rice cakes looks simple, but its operation process is very particular. In the old days, pure glutinous rice was not used to make rice cakes, because it was too tough and easy to become half-cooked when steaming glutinous rice flour. Not only was the rice cake not well made, but it was also unpalatable and easy to spoil. Usually, when making rice cakes, a proper amount of polished japonica rice should be added to the glutinous rice. Nowadays, glutinous rice is not very tough, so pure glutinous rice can also be used to make rice cakes. The time and method of washing glutinous rice for making rice cakes are also very particular. The rice should be washed clean and not too wet. The experienced method is to put the washing basket up and down in the water no more than three times. After a few hours, the washed rice can be ground into a stone mill, and the ground rice flour should be sieved through a sieve. The first step in making rice cakes is to "moisten the flour". Add a proper amount of cold water to the rice flour to be steamed, and then put a thick layer of rice flour at the bottom of the steaming steamer. As the steam gradually rises, add rice flour to the steamer evenly. When the steam reaches the surface of the rice flour, it means that the rice flour has been steamed. At this time, the rice flour looks moist and shiny. The steamed rice flour is called "mao cake". At this time, two people carry the steamer and put the mao cake into the stone mortar that has been washed with boiling water, and then they can start making rice cakes. The key to pounding rice cakes is the word "beat". The quality of rice cakes is achieved through hard beating. Two or three people take turns beating the rice cakes, and stop from time to time for another person to pull the rice cakes continuously to prevent the stone mortar and stone hammer from sticking to each other. After the rice cakes are beaten to look oily and shiny, they are lifted onto the cake-making table and divided into several pieces of rice cakes of basically equal size with fine hemp ropes or cotton yarns. The rice cakes are then rubbed by hand into large rice cakes with coordinated length and width, moderate thickness, square corners and straight edges, a smooth bottom surface, and easy to cut with a knife. When beating the first steamed rice cake, the family who makes the cakes will cut off a piece and share it with the people present to eat the rice cake head. This is also a traditional rule. The skill of pounding rice cakes has been included in the third batch of Jiaxing City's intangible cultural heritage list. Information source: Jiaxing Library Information source: Jiaxing Library