Volunteers from the Yantai Association of Women Entrepreneurs prepare Laba congee in Yantai, Shandong province, Jan 5, 2017. [Photo/yantai.dzwww.com]

Volunteers from the Yantai Association of Women Entrepreneurs distributed Laba congee to the city's sanitation workers, empty-nest senior citizens, and disabled people on Jan 5, a gift of festival atmosphere as well as care from the community and society.

Jan 5 marked the Laba Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. It's customary on this day to eat a special Laba congee, or eight-treasure porridge, usually made with at least eight ingredients, representing people's prayers for the harvest, happiness, and peace.

More than 40 volunteers from the Yantai Association of Women Entrepreneurs prepared 2,000 bowls of Laba congee and gave them to people with physical disabilities, elderly people who live by themselves, and sanitation workers in the morning.

"I didn't expect to eat Laba congee today because my shift starts at four o'clock in the morning and I have no time to cook the food myself," said Li Dacheng, a 50-something sanitation worker.

Yu Zhongwei, vice president of the Yantai Association of Women Entrepreneurs, who organized the activity, said that volunteers gathered at four o'clock in the morning and stewed the Laba congee with lotus seeds, glutinous rice, red jujube, red bean, raisins, black rice, and other ingredients, all possessing the function of warming the stomach, dispelling any feelings of dampness, and strengthening the body in the winter, in accordance with traditional Chinese medicine.

Volunteers from the Yantai Association of Women Entrepreneurs also helped to paste the character "Fu" on the doors of elderly people's apartments on Jan 5 in Yantai. The character Fu is generally printed on a square piece of red paper or stitched on fabric, and Chinese traditions suggests it is meant to bring fortune or good luck during the next year. [Photo/yantai.dzwww.com]