Duanwu Festival (Duanwu Jie) is on the fifth day of May of the Chinese lunar calendar every year, and it is on June 6th of Western calendar this year. Also known as the dragon boat festival, it is one of the most important traditional festivals in China and it has a history more than two thousands of years.

There are many theories about the origin of Duanwu Festival. The most popular one is that it is to commemorate Qu Yuan (340 BC -278 BC), a great patriotic poet, whose masterpieces are Lisao and Nine Songs. After he was exiled by the king, he drowned himself in the River of Miluo. The local people paddled their boats into rivers and lakes, trying to find him. They also threw rice balls into the river to feed the fish so the fish would not eat their beloved poet. Some scholars searched through ancient documents and archaelogical artifacts and traced the origin of the festival to be earlier than Qu Yuan. Their theory is that Duanwu was originally a totem worship festival by the Wuyue people who lived in the southern part of China.

Whatever the origin is, due to the thousands of years of history and vast territories of China, it has transformed into different legends and the original rituals might also have mutated into different customs. However, the story of Qu Yuan is still the dominating mainstream belief, and the dragon boat races and the consumption of a sticky rice dumpling wrapped in reed called zongzi are the most popular rituals for Duanwu Festival.

Neither a historian nor an archaeologist, I think I am attracted to Qu Yuan because he was poet or a shaman, who seemed to have the mystical power to communicate with the supernatural in a cosmic scale. His poems were full of myths, metaphors, similes, and comparisons. He drank dew and ate flower petals, cut his clothes from fragrant flowers and leaves, and wore a tall hat and a long sword. He drove his horse cart from morning to evening, running between the heaven and earth. “The road is long and extends to remote distances, and I will search far and wide.” He was searching for justice, understanding, and appreciation. He was exiled by his king, who was leading the country in the wrong direction and surrounded by treacherous, greedy, and jealous people. He was trying to persuade the king to stop indulging in worldly pleasure and advise the king to run the country by setting up law and order and by using talented and virtuous people. Qu Yuan’s situation seems to me is timeless and without geographical limitation. It can happen at anytime and any place and it is universal. Maybe your boss is like Qu Yuan’s King! Qu Yuan is an archetype of all upright, loyal, honest , and talented people, and that is why his legend has been carried on.

I like Qu Yuan more as a poet than as a politician. I wish I could bring you, my readers, into Qu Yuan’s highly imaginative world. I wish we could jump on the cart of a jade elephant driven by flying dragons. We would move freely in the sky as we stir up dust of rainbows and wave flags of clouds. We would shriek like the phoenix while we stretch and flutter broad wings. Traversing over oceans and space, we would raise our questions to the heavens.

Although I could not let you experience the surreal poetic world created by Qu Yuan, I can at least write the recipe of zongzi and let you taste the fragrance of reed leaves and rice, for Qu Yuan, and for you and me.

Zongzi Recipe

Materials:

Two pound of stick (or sweet) rice (LuoMi in Chinese)
Half pound pork (for salty taste)
One pound reed leaves
1 foot of string for each zongzi

¼ cup soy sauce
2 tsp sugar
¼ cup chopped green onion
1 tbsp minced ginger

Instructions:

Wash the rice and soak the rice in water for three hours.
Cut the pork into 1 inch cubes, add soy source, sugar, green onion and ginger to marinate for two hours.
Wash reed leaves, cut the ends to make the ends straight, put them in the boiling water for five minute and then put them in cold water.
Put two pieces of reed leaves together; fold them into a cone shape.
Fill the cone with rice half full, add two pieces of pork, and then fill the whole cone with
rice.
Fold the extra part of the leaves to cover the opening of the cone and use string to tie the cone tight.
Put the finished zongzi into a pot, add water and let water to cover all the zongzi.
Put the pot over medium heat and cook for over 2 hours until the rice is soft.

You can mix the rice with beans or other ingredients to make zongzi of different flavors or tastes. Instead of pork another popular meat ingredient is Chinese sausage pieces.

Note: This recipe is not easy to get correct on the first try since it takes practice to wrap uncooked rice in pieces of reed. It is possible to buy premade zongzi from your local Asian market and boil them at home.

As always, more recipes are available in the eBooks listed on our website.