"A bowl of Laba porridge warms a city." From January 12th to 17th (the 2nd to the 7th day of the twelfth lunar month), Hangzhou Yunlin Charitable Foundation brought freshly made Laba porridge, to various locations such as sanitation centers, nursing homes, welfare institutions, and construction sites to extend early New Year blessings to everyone. This Laba Festival tradition from Lingyin Temple has been recognized as a local intangible cultural heritage.
At 10 o'clock on the 12th, a postal vehicle loaded with 16,704 servings of freshly made Laba porridge from Lingyin Temple arrived at the Hangzhou Environmental Sanitation and Solid Waste Disposal Center. The porridge was distributed to 16,000 frontline sanitation workers in districts such as Shangcheng, Gongshu, Xihu, Binjiang, Xiaoshan, Yuhang, Linping, and the West Lake Scenic Area, conveying warm greetings from Lingyin Temple to these urban beauticians.
From the 13th to the 17th, a compassionate team from Hangzhou Yunlin Charitable Foundation, brought the delicious Laba porridge and New Year calendars from Lingyin Temple to various elderly care institutions, children’s care centers and families in need. The places they visited included Shang Tianzhu Care Home, Zhuantang Elderly Care Home, Gudang Elderly Care Home, Chaohui Street Rehabilitation Station, Dingqiao Branch of Hangzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Longju Temple Construction Site, Shiqiao Beijing Park Elderly Apartment, Xihu Street Elderly Care Home, Wanwan Care Center, Hangzhou Oak Hospital, Hangzhou First Social Welfare Institute, Hangzhou Children's Welfare Institute, Hangzhou Rescue Management Station, Carnation Children's Rehabilitation Center, Hangzhou Yanglingzi School, Chenxing Children's Intervention Center, Hangzhou Qimingxing Children's Rehabilitation Center, Hangzhou "First Aid by Your Side" Volunteer Mentor Team, and the families of needy students in the community of Hangtou, Jiande.
Since the resumption of the Laba porridge distribution in 2008, Lingyin Temple has continued this tradition for 17 consecutive years, with the number of servings increasing each year and the beneficiary groups continuously expanding. The Laba Festival ritual of Lingyin Temple has been successively recognized as the sixth batch of intangible cultural heritage in Hangzhou, the fifth batch of intangible cultural heritage in Zhejiang Province, and in 2021, it was selected as a representative project in the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage, attracting widespread attention from all sectors of society.
Starting from the first day of the twelfth lunar month, Lingyin Temple has been collaborating with various caring units, including street communities and news media. As part of Yunlin Charitable Foundation’s outreach efforts, over 300,000 servings of Laba porridge have been gradually distributed to key construction sites, railway and highway stations, long-distance bus stations, street communities, hospitals, nursing homes, and rehabilitation stations. This ensured that many elderly individuals in the communities were able to receive Lingyin Temple's Laba porridge right at their doorsteps.
