Jun

6

Rice Dumpling Festival

June 6, 2008 |

Rice Dumpling Festival

Rice Dumpling Festival is a widely celebrated festival amongst the Chinese. The celebration is to pay respect to the patriotic poet, Qu Yuan. The legend involves a complicated throne-fighting war and political history. In a nutshell, Qu Yuan was an important minister back in Chu Kingdom in ancient China. He had been known for his loyalty for the emperor of Chu, and loved his country greatly. However, His Majesty had not taken Qu Yuan’s advice seriously, and he eventually got himself trapped and captured in a foreign land by his enemies, which then lead to his own death.

Sad and angry at the corrupted, Qu Yuan tied himself to a big rock and threw himself into the River of Puo Luo. The people then made rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves and threw them into the river. They believed this would stop the fish from eating Qu Yuan’s body. Some would even row down stream in a boat, beating drums and shouting out loud in the hope to scare the fish away. This was also believed to have started the dragon boat rowing competition.

Since then, the 5th day of the 5th month in the Chinese Calendar has been set as Ric Dumpling Festival in remembrance of the incident. This year, it falls on 8/6/2008 (this coming Sunday). Although there were many versions of legends and stories that indicate Duan Wu has existed way before Qu Yuan’s death, the tradition still carries on.

The rice dumplings (ZongZi) are glutinous rice (or sticky rice in some countries like Thailand and Hong Kong) wrapped in bamboo leaves, or other large leaves (lotus is one of the more commonly used leaves). You can find all sorts of different fillings in the rice: pork, roast pork, chestnut, egg, salted egg, mushroom, red bean, or just simply without filling. They could be just white rice dumpling (not pre-fried), or brown (pre-fried with soya sauce). Baba Nyonya ‘chang’ is also very popular. Scroll down and try to identify which is ‘pui’, ‘nyonya’ and such…

 


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Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. swee on April 12, 2009 12:44 pm

    could you write a poem about dumpling festival?

    I dunno about
    a legend
    or was it a folklore
    that my parents
    used to talk
    about
    when approaching
    dumpling festival
    of long long time ago
    when a faithful minister
    loved by his people
    committed suicide
    when the emperor
    distrust him
    …so, to keep
    the fishes from eating him
    all people started to
    throw glutinous rice
    into the river
    that’s how
    the story goes

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