Today, Chinese all over the world are celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival, also known as Duanwu Festival in honour of Qu Yuan, China’s first poet. Qu Yuan was a famous Chinese scholar and loyal minister of the king of Chu in the third century BCE. His wisdom antagonised other court officials who later accused him of false charges of conspiracy.
As a result, Qu Yuan was exiled by the king and during his exile, the scholar composed many poems to express his anger and sorrow towards the king and the people. Qu Yuan drowned himself by attaching a heavy stone to his chest and jumping into the Miluo River in 278 BCE at the age of 61.
The people of Chu attempted to rescue him by searching for him desperately in their boats but failed. Every year, the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated to commemorate this attempt at rescuing Qu Yuan. After Qu Yuan’s death, the people of Chu began the tradition of throwing sacrificial cooked rice into the river for the scholar. Others believed that the rice would prevent the fish in the river from eating his body.
The tradition of wrapping rice in bamboo leaves to make rice dumplings began soon after. Like many Chinese born outside China, I did not know about the story of the unfor tunate Chinese scholar when I ate my first rice dumpling.
But since it was a tradition for all Chinese to eat rice dumplings during the Dragon Boat Festival, I ate mine. Today, thanks to the Internet, I understand the significance of today’s Dragon Boat Festival and thank the people of Chu for initiating the tradition of wrapping rice in bamboo leaves to make rice dumplings.
It is a unique tradition that has passed down from generation to generation through the ages. Now, although we can eat rice dumplings almost every day, today is a special day for Chinese to eat lots of rice dumplings and race dragon boats in honour of the famous Chinese scholar and poet, Qu Yuan who lived long ago! Many busy housewives will opt to buy the rice dumplings for today’s festival because it is laborious to make them. The glutinous rice has to be soaked in advance and the ingredients used for the filing prepared days ahead.
On the actual day of making the rice dumplings, the bamboo leaves and the straws used for making the rice dumplings have to be boiled and wiped dry. To make the rice dumplings, you must first know how to wrap them in the bamboo leaves. The basic instruction of how to make the rice dumplings goes like this: Pick up two pieces of leaves, smooth side up, and form a cone. Place the leaves together and fold them up at the centre of the leaf on top to form a cone. Fill the cone with a tablespoon of glutinous rice at the bottom. Fill the cone with the filling and then with a tablespoon of glutinous rice at the top.
Fold and wrap. Sounds easy? It took me a few weeks to figure out how to fold and wrap the dumplings by scrutinising the pictures on the Internet and the photographs in the recipe books. When I was a teenager, I lived in a neighbourhood where a few Hainanese women and their families resided. Every Dragon Boat Festival, these women and their family members would eat the rice dumplings that they and their friends made. A few days before the festival, they would gather in one house to make the dumplings for their families. Children and teenagers, who were present to witness the making of the dumplings, were discouraged from touching anything at the scene. We could only watch but not touch. Because of this strict ruling, I only learnt to make my own rice dumplings less than five years ago. If they had allowed me to touch and experiment with the rice dumplings, I think I would have learnt to make my own dumplings ages ago. Never theless, deep in my heart, I am grateful for the good recipes and instructions I found on the Internet and the recipe books I bought in the bookstores in Kuching.
Believe me, my friends, if there is a will, there is a way. I wanted to learn how to make rice dumplings and at last, I succeeded.
The few years I spent as a committee member of the Women’s Wing of the Hainan Association in Kuching also allowed me to polish my skills in the making of rice dumplings. The women members would gather in one house to make rice dumplings for sale during the Kuching Festival. At such gatherings, I graduated from cleaning the banana leaves to wrapping the rice dumplings. From the Hainan Association in Kuching, I learnt to make Hainanese rice dumplings with pork fillings and banana leaves.
Personally, I have also learnt, from the Internet and recipes, how to make rice dumplings with sambal and red bean fillings. Last Saturday, I had the urge to make my own rice dumplings again. I found myself slightly out of practice since it had been two years since I last made them. I made 20 rice dumplings with pork fillings and bamboo leaves and none of them burst during the boiling process. That, I thought, was a pretty good effort and gave myself a big pat on the back.
My son loved the rice dumplings I made. He ate some on Saturday night and he ate three rice dumplings instead of rice for lunch yesterday. The fact that he ate three for lunch made my day.
The hard work I put into the rice dumplings had been worth my while. Ideally, rice dumplings should be made together by friends on a fixed day, like the Hainanese women who lived in my neighbourhood long ago and the members of the Women’s Wing of the Kuching Hainan Association.
My rice dumplings are not much to look at. Their shapes are not even and some of the strings are unevenly tied but I am glad my son loves them because I have made them with lots of love!
