Dragon Boat Festival

Rice dumplings

Today, if you received any pyramid shaped glutinous rice dumplings wrapped with bamboo or reed leaves (Other 'scientific' names such as: "Kocong"/tzung-tzi/guo jung/zongzi...whatever you wish to call it) today...well it's the Dragon Boat Festival or DuanWu Jie in the Chinese Calendar today (5th day of the 5th month in the Lunar Calendar).

Qu Yuan

The popular theory of the origin of this festival said is to commemorating a great patriot poet, named Qu Yuan. A wise man who serves under the Emperor Huai during the Warring States (475 - 221BC), his fights against corruption among the court officials causes many officials plotted against him by exterted their evil influence to the Emperor, thus caused him dismissed from the court and exiled. During his exile, he travelled all around the country, taught and wrote about his ideas and his work has contributed as some of the most important ancient Chinese culture study to this very day. Soon afterwards, he learnt that his mother state, the Chu state was defeated by the Qin. He was so despaired that in his sadness he jumped into the Miluo River. His body was never found.

Legend says that when people learnt that he drowned, fishermen raced to the spot with their boats to find his body. After searching attempt was fruitless, people threw zongzi into the river to feed the fish so that it would not eat Qu Yuan's body and paddled the boats to scare the fish away from the spot where Qu Yuan jumped (This is said to be the origin of the dragon boat race).

Dragon Boat

Today, you will see the rice dumplings in different shape and sizes with various fillings such as groundnuts, meat, salted egg, beans, mushroom, etc. Rice dumplings and dragon boats are closely associated with the festival. But most importanly, it is to remind people of loyalty and commitment to the community, just like Qu Yuan once did.

Referrence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duanwu_Festival

Yummy....I am going to eat my "kocong" loh~~ hahahaha...you guys have a nice evening.