‍People in China celebrated the Laba festival on Wednesday with the oldest temple in Beijing is embracing the Chinese tradition by handing out free porridge.

Despite it being minus seven degrees outside in Beijing, and supposedly an even lower temperature at the temple, the cold weather did not stop crowds of people swarming in to sample the warm treat.

In China, Laba porridge is also called "eight treasure porridge" as it contains a nutritious mix of grains, beans and dried fruits.

The traditional eight treasure porridge has been reinvented over the years. The kind served at Beijing's oldest temple usually combines more than a dozen different ingredients, such as rice, glutinous rice, corn, red beans and lotus seeds. Oats, wheat and buckwheat were added to the recipe in recent years, which supposedly enhances its health benefits.

While some believe that Laba porridge originated from sacrificial rituals held on this day by ancestors, many of the temples which commemerate the festival have a different story. They say that the enlightened Sakyamuni became Buddha on the eighth day of the last lunar month, or "Laba" in Chinese. And before this happened, a shepherdess had saved him from fatigue and hunger with a bowl of porridge. As time went by, both versions about where the porridge came from were combined.

However, most of the people visiting the temple today were not Buddhists. They had traveled to the western suburb of Beijing to simply enjoy the scenery, and of course, try the porridge.

Some visitors even came from as far as Fengtai district, which is about an hour's drive away. "I heard about this event from the elders in my family. They said that previously the porridge was only handed out to the poor, but now it's ordinary people coming here too, in hopes of praying for peace."

According to the organizers, they started preparing for this event a month ago. It takes ten hours to just cook the porridge, and all the ingredients were donated by Buddhist followers.

Hao Xinjian, a staff member of Tanzhe Temple says, "Our temple has been revitalizing the tradition for about six or seven years now, holding this event annually. We started out with just dozens of people attending, to now thousands of people visiting the temple on this day."

A bowl of porridge represents the benevolence of giving. Despite it being a thousand years old, this Chinese tradition is still going strong, bringing happiness and warmth in a bowl of tasty hot porridge during the chilly winter season.