What does memory mean to you? Places can make us reminisce about a person, while tastes and smells can bring back memories of foods from our childhood. While sitting in front of my computer and thinking how best to introduce the local food from my hometown, I thought back to the memories of the foods I ate back when I was growing up.

A small two-story house with billowing chimney smoke and loud noise from a ventilation system in the kitchen. Sitting in front of the roaring flames of a wood-burning stove, my grandmother put dough on ao (鏊, a shallow pan used to make Chinese pancake) and watched as, in a flash, the dough was turned into a pancake.

In Tiantai, each family prepares jiao bing tong (饺饼筒, a roll of thin pancake stuffed with filling mixture) in December of the lunar calendar. Jiao bing tong is a kind of food we make to bid farewell to the passing year. It's also one of the favorite foods among locals in Tiantai, a place known for being the birthplace of Buddhism and Taoism. It remains to this day a beautiful city where Taoist hermits live. Yongning (永宁) County in Tiantai is known as the birthplace of Jigong who was once hailed as a living Buddha. One folktale tells that Jigong entered the Buddhist priesthood at Guoqing Temple (国清寺). He felt hungry and so mixed flour and water into dough to make a roll of pancake stuffed with scraps of vegetables. It was so delicious and he shared it with other Buddhist priests. Ever since, it has been handed down for generations. Today, jiao bing tong is served on traditional holidays, for example Qingming Festival (the fifth day of the fifth month of the year by the lunar calendar), July 7th in the lunar calendar and New Year's Day, as well as family events.

I also ate jiao bing tong on New Year's Day when I was young. While my grandmother started making dough early in the morning, my grandfather went to pick up some vegetables at the local grocers. The whole family would then gather together to wash, trim and fry the vegetables that he had bought. By noon, the filling was ready to make jiao bing tong and my grandmother baked a thin pancake on the ao and gave it to the rest of family to fill it as much as they wanted.

As well as jiao bing tong, there are many other culinary customs for celebrating the New Year. Indeed, the first of January in the lunar calendar is the only day that mothers do not need to wake up early in the morning. In Tiantai, there is a saying that goes: men have to make breakfast on Lunar New Year's Day, so that women who prepare meals in all seasons can have at least one day to lie in. The breakfast on Lunar New Year's Day is very important as it is the first meal of the year. By tradition, the whole family gathers in the morning and eats five-grain porridge, which is thought to bring five different kinds of good fortune. Traditional five-grain porridge has white rice, jujube, tofu, sweet potato and taro, but nowadays people put their favorite ingredients.

Dinner on Lunar New Year's Day is important as well. In Tiantai, dumplings are a must-have for the first dinner of the New Year. Tiantai-style dumplings are similar to Shanghai style huntun (混沌), but a little bigger and stuffed with more ingredients. In general, family members sit together after the dinner on December 31 in the lunar calendar and make dumplings together. The reason that people prepare dumplings not on the New Year's Day but the day before is because people believe that tough work should not be done on New Year's Day and that any trouble experienced on the first day of the New Year will continue throughout the whole year.

Tiantai in fact has a much wider variety of foods – glutinous rice cake, beef wrapped in wheat crepes, qingming dumplings and qingming pancakes, to name but a few! If you are thinking of visiting Tiantai, make sure to try them all.

Living alone away from my hometown inevitably leads me to reminisce about my hometown. My memories can sometimes appear as vivid as a photograph, but are other times just hazy. But, I can always remember the tastes of my hometown cooking. Do you have a special food that brings back memories of happy old days? Why don't you enjoy those memories by looking at the food? Just like I did to write this column.