How many sticky rice dumplings (or zongzi or bakchang or chang) can you eat?
My younger sister, C, can eat many and that was why she asked me to make some recently.
Chinese all over the world celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival (Diwanwu Jie) on 30 May this year.The date coincided with the 5th day of the 5th lunar month.
The festival is a traditional holiday observed annually over 2,000 years in China to commemorate Qu Yuan (340-278 BC), an ancient Chinese patriotic poet. On this day, the Chinese will eat the sticky rice dumplings and hold dragon boat races.
Like some of my Chinese friends who are English-educated, I was only aware of this year’s Dragon Boat Festival on the night of 29 May. I was alerted through whatsapp by my best friend who was English-educated like me but wisely chose to learn Mandarin on her own after Primary Six.
On the day of the festival, I woke up early, at 6.30am, to buy some chicken meat, noodles and other food at Tabuan Laru in Kuching for the compulsory traditional family meal at the Stutong Community Market.
At the traditional “kuih” (cake) stalls at the market that morning, there were piles and piles of different sticky rice dumplings for sale.
When I asked the lady trader about the different chang and how much they cost, she rattled off their names and prices like a robot.
There were Yam chang, Nonya chang (with chicken or pork filling), bakchang (with chicken or pork filling), Teochew chang (with chicken or pork filling), kee chang (Alkaline dumplings) and tau sar chang (with red bean filling).
I cannot remember the prices of all the chang. However, I remember buying a few small bakchang for RM2 each, five tiny tau sar chang for RM7 and a few slightly bigger Nonya chang for RM3 each. All in all, I paid RM21 for just a handful of chang.
The prices of chang, like the prices of other goods including necessities, have been spiralling each year. The more fanciful the chang are, the more expensive they are.
My best friend, who is in Sibu, told me that she also bought her chang on the day of the festival.
Although her sister-in-law knows how to make the rice dumplings, she does not want to trouble herself with the task.
When I shopped for the alkaline till powder to make the kee chang, the lady shopkeeper I met confessed that she had forgotten how to make the rice dumplings. She told me she made them when her mother was still alive. When the old lady passed on, she stopped making them. It was also partly because the shopkeeper was too busy running her trading business.
When it comes to making chang, practice really makes perfect. When I was a schoolgirl, I lived in a neighbourhood in Sibu where Hainanese housewives proudly made their own chang every year for the Dragon Boat Festival.
But these ladies did not allow young schoolgirls to play with their raw materials or practise the art of making chang with their ingredients. All the young schoolgirls could do was just watch. But anyway, in those days, I was not interested at all in cooking or making any traditional “kuih”.
One day, not so long ago, I suddenly had the urge to learn the art of making chang. I learnt to make them the hard way – by looking at the cooking blogs on the internet and buying recipe books.
But when there is a will, there is a way. Slowly, but steadily, I mastered the art of making chang, especially the art of wrapping them in bamboo leaves.
From the women section of the Kuching Hainan Association, I learnt to make Hainanese chang by using banana leaves.
Making chang is a tedious job. You can do it alone but it is better to enlist the help of family members or friends.
When I first started making chang, I would stay up the whole night just to prepare the ingredients, wrap the chang and wait for them to cook.
Until a fortnight ago, I had not made any chang for at least two years because of my busy work schedule. I would not have made any chang this year if my younger sister had not implored me repeatedly.
She volunteered to help me boil the bamboo leaves and hemp strings and later dry them.
She also helped me to wash the plates, boil the rice dumplings and sweep the floor. I made about 25 bakchang (with chicken filling) and 20 tau sar chang on the first day, working from 1pm to 7pm.
I made the chang again a few days after that at my sister’s request.
When all the chang were cooked and ready on both days, the big smile on my younger sister’s face was worth the hard work of making them.This is the truth straight from the heart.
I gave my younger sister more than 10 bakchang and tau sar chang to bring home. I also called up one of my nephews and a sister-in-law to pick up their shares of the rice dumplings.
As I have often said in my column, good things, my friends, should always be shared with families and friends.
