Fragment of Memories: Dumpling Festival

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Dumpling Festival

Local people, learning of his suicide, rushed out in their fishing boats to the middle of the river and desperately tried to save him, but were unsuccessful. In order to keep fish and evil spirits away from his body, they beat drums and splashed the water with their paddles. They threw rice into the water as a food offering to Qu Yuan and to distract the fish away from his body. However, late one night, the spirit of Qu Yuan appeared before his friends and told them that the rice meant for him was being intercepted by a huge river dragon. He asked his friends to wrap their rice into three-cornered silk packages to ward off the dragon. These packages became a traditional food known as zongzi, although the lumps of rice are now wrapped in bamboo leaves instead of silk. The act of racing to search for his body in boats gradually became the cultural tradition of dragon boat racing, which is held on the anniversary of his death every year.
Today, people still eat rice dumplings and participate in dragon boat races to commemorate Qu Yuan's sacrifice on the Duan Wu festival, the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. This year (2006) it is 31/5 in the solar calendar.
Source: Wikipedia

People nowadays will not throw dumplings into river anymore. Such a waste to throw the tasty dumplings into river, besides this will cause river pollutions too *wink*
Even the Dragon Boat Race is not so popular anymore. I remember when I were small, parents used to bring me to Kuching Waterfront there to watch Dragon Boat Race. Everywhere people talked about the boat racing. Well, didn't go to Waterfront there to see whether there is such event going on or not... maybe there is?

Well for me, Dragon Boat Festival means:

1. Eat dumplings. There is 2 kinds of dumplings, the 'normal' dumplings and the small small dumpling, which I don't know what it is called. Ohya, there is another type - Vegetarian Dumpling. Haha. Hmm, dumpling is not cheap nowaday, cost about Rm1.50-Rm2.20 per piece.

Dumplings, just normal dumplings.

Dumplings (smaller version), erm they call what 'kee tzang'.

2. Bath Dragon-Mouth-Water (龙口水) at 1100. Haha. Mom says long long time ago, people believe on 1100, the water is somehow purified by the Dragon's Whiskers *blink*

3. Put "hia3" (in Teochew, no idea whats that called in English and Chinese.) on head. Erm, its a kind of herb actually.

My aunt and the herb.

My grandma. Hehe, see the herb on her ears?

4. Drink herbal tea, or my grandma like to call it "cool-water" (凉水). It is made of few kinds of herbs, boiled together for a few hours, whole morning, I guess. Haha.