Dragon Boat Festival

Recently our little island celebrated Dragon Boat Festival. It's a tradition to eat zongzi (Asian tamales) on this special day. We had been given MANY zongzi in the past as gifts, but we had never made our own. This year, our language school sponsored a cultural event to let the foreigners make their own zongzi. The school prepared all the necessary ingredients for us. They washed lots of bamboo leaves and cooked the necessary fillings. All we had to do was wrap, steam, and eat. Sounds easy, doesn't it?

1. Each person must choose a freshly washed and dried bamboo leaf.
2. Next, shape the bamboo leaf into a funnel.

3. Fill the funnel with sticky rice, meats, peanuts, mushrooms, shallots, dates, sweetened red bean paste, etc.

4. Fold the bamboo leaf over and over and over several times.

5. Tie the wrapped zongzi with a cotton string.

7. Steam and eat.

Dragon Boat Festival is one of Asia's oldest festivals dating back 2300 years. At the end of the Zhou Dynasty, the area we now know as the Mainland had fallen into a state of fragmentation and conflict. While the Zhou dynasty had ruled for several centuries, several other states, originally feudal domains, tried to carve out their own kingdoms. The state of Qin would eventually emerge the victor and unify all of the Mainland under one rule for the first time in history.

Qu Yuan served as minister to the Zhou Emperor. A wise and articulate man, he was loved by the common people. He did much to fight against the rampant corruption that plagued the court-- thereby earning the envy and fear of other officials. Therefore, when he urged the emperor to avoid conflict with the Qin Kingdom, the officials pressured the Emperor to have him removed from service. In exile, he traveled, taught and wrote for several years. Hearing that the Zhou had been defeated by the Qin, he fell into despair and threw himself into the Milou River. As he was so loved by the people, fishermen rushed out in long boats, beating drums to scare the fish away, and throwing zongzi into the water to feed the fish so that they would not eat Qu Yuan's body.