Tastes may change but tradition remains
Source: Xinhua |
June 7, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE traditional food of the Dragon Boat Festival - zongzi - has turned into a popular dessert that people eat every day, and it has evolved over time, adapting to people's tastes.
The food made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves used to be served as a main meal during the festival, or duanwu, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.
"When I was young, my mother would make zongzi only when duanwu was drawing near," said Bai Yongjian, a 30-year-old man in Taiyuan, capital city of China's northern Shanxi Province.
His mother would soak the sticky rice in water for two days.
"My mom would use a whole afternoon to wrap the rice with boiled reed leaves into a charming tetrahedral shape and fasten it with a soaked straw. I used to sit alongside to watch her finish each magical process and wonder when they could be put into my bowl," he said.
In the evening, the half-finished zongzi would then be arranged neatly in circles in a giant cooking pot before steaming over a gentle fire for about five hours.
They would have to stay in the pot with the lid on for a whole night to allow the fragrance of the reed leaves and the rice to combine and fully complement each other.
"It's nearly a torture for a little child to wait for so long. I can never forget the feeling of being able to smell it but not able to have it. In my childhood memories, it was several days that I waited before gobbling the zongzi, instead of just one night," Bai said. "That always seemed forever in my memories."
Nowadays, zongzi has become a common food that is always available in convenience stores and supermarkets.
Fillings are becoming more and more diversified as producers keep innovating in order to suit people's different tastes.
Liu Tieliang, professor of Chinese folklore at Beijing Normal University, says that although zongzi has changed over time, it had remained a strong symbol of the Dragon Boat Festival.
The festival, which was celebrated yesterday, commemorates the death of Qu Yuan, a poet who drowned himself in 278 BC. According to legend, packets of rice were thrown into the river to prevent fish eating his body.
The food made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves used to be served as a main meal during the festival, or duanwu, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.
"When I was young, my mother would make zongzi only when duanwu was drawing near," said Bai Yongjian, a 30-year-old man in Taiyuan, capital city of China's northern Shanxi Province.
His mother would soak the sticky rice in water for two days.
"My mom would use a whole afternoon to wrap the rice with boiled reed leaves into a charming tetrahedral shape and fasten it with a soaked straw. I used to sit alongside to watch her finish each magical process and wonder when they could be put into my bowl," he said.
In the evening, the half-finished zongzi would then be arranged neatly in circles in a giant cooking pot before steaming over a gentle fire for about five hours.
They would have to stay in the pot with the lid on for a whole night to allow the fragrance of the reed leaves and the rice to combine and fully complement each other.
"It's nearly a torture for a little child to wait for so long. I can never forget the feeling of being able to smell it but not able to have it. In my childhood memories, it was several days that I waited before gobbling the zongzi, instead of just one night," Bai said. "That always seemed forever in my memories."
Nowadays, zongzi has become a common food that is always available in convenience stores and supermarkets.
Fillings are becoming more and more diversified as producers keep innovating in order to suit people's different tastes.
Liu Tieliang, professor of Chinese folklore at Beijing Normal University, says that although zongzi has changed over time, it had remained a strong symbol of the Dragon Boat Festival.
The festival, which was celebrated yesterday, commemorates the death of Qu Yuan, a poet who drowned himself in 278 BC. According to legend, packets of rice were thrown into the river to prevent fish eating his body.
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