The 5th day of the 5th month of the lunar calendar is the DuanWu, or Dragon Boat Festival and is a statutory holiday in China. This year the double fifth falls on the 6th June so the shops are stocked with ZongZi and other traditional foods for the upcoming family gatherings.
Steaming Zong Zi
ZongZi
Zong Zi are balls of glutinous rice, often filled with sweet or savoury fillings such as pork, egg, dates or red bean paste. These are traditionally wrapped in bamboo leaves and steamed for hours.
Until recently the construction of these used to be a family tradition, with recipes passed down through generations. As many people are now working full time Zong Zi are more usually bought ready-made and pre-cooked, so just require a few minutes of steaming.
I’ve had Zong Zi before in the Zhejiang province, en route to Hangzhou which is supposedly the ‘home of Zhong Zi in China’. We were recommended to try them at a particular motorway truck stop and they were absolutely delicious, containing a full salted egg yolk and large lump of barbequed pork.
Pork and egg Zhong Zi
Sadly those bought in even the most expensive shops in Beijing barely measure up to a Zhejiang truck stop. The rice is less flavoursome and the filling is meagre, but they’re still a pleasant change from the norm. At home they’re eaten anyhow, but in a restaurant you’re given a disposable plastic glove as removing the bamboo leaves is a little messy.
The Dragon Boat Festival
The origins of the Dragon Boat Festival are debated, but the most popular story is that of Qu Yuan. He was a royal advisor in the state of Chu, who opposed the king’s alliance with the more powerful Qin state. Accused of treason, Qu was exiled and devoted himself to poetry. Twenty eight years later Qin conquered Chu as he’d predicted and Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 278 BCE.
The local people who he’d befriended paddled out to the body and threw balls of rice into the water so that the fish wouldn’t eat Qu Yuan’s body. These rice dumplings are considered to be the origin of ZongZi, and the paddle out to the body inspired Dragon Boat racing which is now an international sport.
Dragon Boat Racing in Rural Thailand
The leaves and tetrahedral shaped were added a few days later later after Qu Yuan appeared as a ghost and complained that a dragon instead of fish was eating the rice. The angular shape and addition of a couple of leaves seemed to foil the dragon with its sharp claws and pointy teeth. There’s no mention of just how the fish got the leaves off the ZhongZi, or why the friends didn’t simply pull the body out of the water, but that was the last time Qu Yuan appeared.
Other activities to commemorate the poets death include spending the morning drinking wine made from realgar, which is an arsenic byproduct, then attempting to make an egg stand up at noon. I’m guessing it’ll be omelettes for dinner.
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