During Dragon Boat Festival, its customary to enjoy Zongzi, which are glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves. While many urban citizenshave chosen to buy Zongzi from their local supermarket, there are some trying to preserve the tradition by doing it themselves.
Zongzi competition
This Zongzi making competition is held in the coastal city of Qingdao. Participants need to wrap as many "pyramid-shaped dumplings" as possible in five minutes. The prize is awarded to the person with the most dumplings, but quality also matters since only the dumplings which are made up to standard can be counted.
Surprisingly, in this female-dominant game, we find one male contestant. 66-year-old Liu Yaogang learnt the art of wrapping this unique rice dumpling in his twenties-- and says some things have evolved since his younger days.
"In the past, we mixed rice into glutinous rice and mixed old bamboo leaves into the new, because material was not so abundant," said Liu Yaogang, contestant.
Finally, three women managed to snag the first three places. Participants hope such events can help keep the tradition.
"I hope our kids, especially girls know how to make Zongzi. To pass on the tradition to the future," said Xu Wenxiang, second-place winner.
Brick-shaped Zongzi
While conventional Zongzi might be pyramid-shaped, the ones made in Huizhou, southern China's Guangdong province are made square-shaped! This Zongzi is special also because the glutinous rice is soaked for preparation in a special kind of water.
The water is infused with the ashes of a special burnt plant, and then filtered out for impurities. This method yields rice to turn out more delicious and chewy.
Carry fragrant pouches
In Pujiang county, east Zhejiang province, people also carry perfumed pouches during Duanwu.
Luo Feifeng has made a lot of these pouches, shaped as animals and flowers. Each pouch is attached with colored thread and stuffed with grains such as buckwheat and sorghum, and mugwort. The pouches are symbols of an auspicious kind and are used to repel pests.