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发表于 2006-6-1 04:58
Rice Dumplings (Zongzi) and Qu Yuan – About Duanwu Festival
The story of Qu Yuan shows us the legend of a tasy glutinous rice dumpling called Zongzi, a popular specialty consumed during the Dragon Boat Festival. According to the tale, the spirit of Qu Yuan appeared before a group of fisherman, crying out to them that he was starving because a dragon was eating his rice offerings.
The offerings consisted of bamboo tubes filled with gluttinous rice. In order to prevent the dragon from stealing them, Qu Yuan ordered the tubes to be closed with lily leaves adn tied with multi-colored threads.
Today's Zongzi is made similarly, with a serving of rice wrapped in leaves and tied together with string. The way the string is wound and kontted tells waht ingredients are inside.
There are a lot of different kinds of zongzi, each with its own particular flavor, shape, and type of leaf for wrapping. Zongzi is usually four-sided with pointed, rounded ends, or pyramid shapes. Sometimes it is in the shape of a cone or cylinder. The glutinous rice mixture us wrapped in leaves of wild rice, palm or bamboo. Bamboo-leaf zongzi is a specialty of South China.
As for flavor, the Beijing style is the sweetest, with coarse bean paste. Guangdong zongzi is either sweet-tasting, with walnut, date or bean, or salty with filling ham, egg, meat, roast chicken.
Chinese culture has many, many festivals, commemorating some rather unusual events. Dragon Boat Festival is one such festival. This year, it fell on June 15. The main thing to do on this day is to eat zongzi, the glutinous rice dumpling, as it is translated into English, though I think that scarcely describes it.
In some places, they actually do have races of boats that are colorfully decorated with dragon designs, but I have never seen such a race. I have, however, eaten lots of zongzi. I was given several this year. You can buy them commercially and they are commonly eaten as a snack food, but at this time of year, you are likely to receive homemade ones. The rice is a glutinous rice and is very sticky. The rice may be white, as shown above, and it may have some red bean paste inside, though the ones you see here had nothing inside. Sometimes the rice is brown from a sauce and inside is a small chunk of ham. In any case, each one is wrapped in reed leaves and steamed, I suppose, for a long time. At first, I thought they were rather tasteless, but I have developed a taste for them now, and I like to eat them, though once a year is enough.
The origin of the zongzi is as strange as the food itself. It seems that there was a Chinese poet and official (Chinese officials in ancient times were always poets; that was the mark of an educated and capable person) named Qu Yuan (pronounced a little like "chew you ann.") He was an official in the kingdom of Chu, in about 340-278 BC, which was before China had been unified into a nation. China has a tradition of ministers who give advice to the king, or emperor, and Qu Yuan was such a minister. Qu Yuan advised the king of Chu to prepare for war because the state of Qin was poised to devour his state. But the king thought he was safe, since the emperor of Qin seemed to be focusing on other, weaker, states. But, eventually, Qin did attack Chu, and the Chu kingdom was defeated.
Qu Yuan was so distraught over this that he committed suicide by jumping into the Miluo River. His countrymen, upon learning of this tragedy, rushed to the scene in small boats and tried to find his body. They failed to find it, so they made the dumplings wrapped in reed leaves and threw them into the river so the fish would eat the dumplings and not Qu Yuan's body. Later, it became a ritual to eat the zongzi on the anniversary of Qu Yuan's death and to hold dragon boat races.
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