Dragon Boat Festival

Today is the Dragon Boat Festival also known as Duan Wu Jie. Most people, either today or this past weekend, went home or to a relative or friend's house in order to celebrate. We were invited this past weekend to an English teacher's house where we enjoyed a great meal cooked by her father. We also ate zongzi, the traditional dish of the holiday.

Today we went to one of our friend's aunt's house. There we were able to learn how to make zongzi and realized that it really was a difficult task despite the relative ease that her aunt had with preparation. Zongzi are made using bamboo leaves, glutenous rice (luo mi) and a number of different fillings. For our zongzi we used meat, raisins or peanuts. For her aunt the process was relatively straightforward with folding the bamboo leaf, filling it with rice and then quickly wrapping it and tying it without having the leaf break. We were not so successful, but the end result was a delicious dish that we ate all the way back to school.