Rice dumpling festival

~*~*~*Rice dumpling festival*~*~*~

Rice dumpling (English), ham yok zhong (Cantonese), zhong zi (Mandarin), bakchang (Hokkien), pulut (Malay) - all good all yummilicious~

Bakchangs are glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, or other large leaves (lotus is one of the more commonly used leaves). You can find all sorts of different fillings in the rice: pork, roast pork, chestnut, egg, salted egg, mushroom, red bean, or just simply without filling.

Nyonya-style bakchang.

The blue stain is dyed using blue-bell flowers.

i confess, i'm addicted to bakchang.

My daily ration of bakchang since last week has incresed to about 2 bakchangs a day. :P

What to do? Somehow, ppl will be offering me bakchangs and i can never say no, even if I've had one just hours earlier. Yup, I'm a bakchang addict. I know. And i dun wanna do anything about it. :P

For those of you who arent Chinese, you're probably wondering why there's such a big hoo-haa about bakchangs these 2 weeks.

Well, this is the month where we celebrate Duan Wu Jie (Rice dumpling festival), and lotsa aunties and friends are making bakchangs to sell or give-away. And I'm a lucky girl.

And so, we went back to my grandparents' house on Tuesday to celebrate Duan Wu Jie.

This is the Bakchang story which I've googled from the internet...

Duan Wu Jie is a widely celebrated festival amongst the Chinese, to pay respect to the patriotic poet, Qu Yuan (pronounced as Chue Yuan). The legend involves a really long and complicated throne-fighting war and political history. But to make a long story short: Qu Yuan was an important minister back in Chu Kingdom in ancient China.

He had been known for his loyalty for the emperor of Chu, and loved his country greatly. However, His Majesty had not taken Qu Yuan's advice seriously, and he eventually got himself trapped and captured in a foreign land by his enemies, which then lead to his own death.

Sad and angry at the corrupted, dying Kingdom, Qu Yuan tied himself to a big rock and threw himself into the River of Puo Luo.

The people then made rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves and threw them into the river. They believed this would stop the fish from eating Qu Yuan's body. Some would even row down stream in a boat, beating drums and shouting out loud in the hope to scare the fish away (it was believed that it is how the Dragon Boat event is related to the festival.

Since then, the 5th day of the 5th month in the Chinese calendar has been set as Duan Wu Festival to remember the incident. Although there were versions of legends and stories that indicate Duan Wu has existed way before Qu Yuan's death, the tradition still carries on.