Every Dragon Boat Festival, my mother always makes a lot of rice dumplings, or zongzi, to celebrate this special day. She shares most of them to our relatives or her friends who doesn't know how to make this traditional food. Since ancient China, people always soak sticky rice, wash the bamboo leaves, and wrap up the rice dumplings in the annual Lunar year in early May. The stuffing of the Chinese rice dumplings can be vary, for example, some people might add red dates and other vegetarian food in their dumplings, while my mom prefers to add pork, Chinese sausage, and egg yolk. Sometimes she also makes sweet rice dumplings with homemade bean paste. At this you might ask why would the Chinese make rice dumplings in this particular day, well there's a folklore behind it. The festival commemorates Qu Yuan, a minister in the service of the Chu Emperor in China in 227 B.C. Despairing over reports at court, Qu throws himself into a river. People paddle their boats and try in vain to save he. However, no one can find his corpse. Later, people scatters rice in the water, and hopes that the food can distract creatures in the water from consuming his body. This also leads to the custom of dragon boat races.Eating rice dumplings and watching dragon boat races make the festival interesting and special. They reminds me where am I from, and teach me to respect the Chinese tradition, no matter where I live.

– Jiongdong Li

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