This week marks Duanwu Jie, or Dragon Boat Festival, the most poetic of the Chinese holidays (and my favorite). In honor of it, here are step-by-step instructions (courtesy of CNN) for making the traditional rice dumplings that are eaten on this day.
For more about the history and meaning of Duanwu Jie, see my post from last year.
Today is Duan Wu Jie (端午节), or Dragon Boat Festival, my favorite of the major Chinese holidays. It commemorates the beautiful, if not cheerful, story of the great poet Qu Yuan, who threw himself in the Mi Luo river in protest against the government. In order to try to save his body from being eaten by fish, people went out in boats and threw sticky rice cakes wrapped in leaves into the river. To honor Qu Yuan on this day, people around the world hold dragon boat races and eat zongzi, sticky rice dumplings.
The full history of the day, and a biography of Qu Yuan, are on Wikipedia. Crayola has posted craft projects related to dragon boats, and this book,Awakening the Dragon: The Dragon Boat Festival
