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The northern Dragon Boat Festival also uses zongzi leaves, but unlike the southern zongzi, the northern zongzi are all sweet, and the material is mainly simple white rice except glutinous rice. Red beans, dates, red bean paste, sugar, preserved fruit and other materials will often appear in various northern zongzi, which are rich in taste and materials.

Eating zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival in the north is another traditional custom of China people. Zongzi, also known as "Jiao Shu" and "Zongzi". It has a long history and various patterns. According to records, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, Thai rice was wrapped in leaves (rhombic white leaves) into horns, which were called "horny millet", and rice was sealed and baked in bamboo tubes, which was called "tube dumplings". In the early Eastern Han Dynasty, Thai rice was soaked in plant ash water. Because the water contains alkali, millet is wrapped into a quadrangle by swallow cotyledons, and cooked, it becomes Guangdong alkali zongzi.

In Jin Dynasty, Zongzi was officially designated as Dragon Boat Festival food. At this time, in addition to glutinous rice, jiaozi also added Alpinia oxyphylla, and the boiled jiaozi was called "Yizhi jiaozi". At that time, local customs in Yueyang recorded that it was customary to wrap Thai rice with swallow cotyledons and cook it thoroughly, starting from May 5 and continuing until the solstice in summer. One is zongzi and the other is Xiaomi. "Miscellaneous zongzi appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Rice is mixed with animal meat, chestnuts, red dates, red beans and so on. And there are more and more varieties. Zongzi is also used as a gift for communication.

In the Tang Dynasty, the rice used for zongzi was "white as jade", and its shape appeared conical and rhombic. By the Song Dynasty, there had been "jiaozi with honey juice", that is, fruits entered jiaozi. The poet Su Dongpo wrote a poem "See Yangmei in Zongzi". At this time, there were advertisements of zongzi piled up into pavilions and wooden chariots and horses, indicating that eating zongzi was a fashion in Song Dynasty.

In the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, the wrapping material of zongzi changed from leaves to leaves, and later, zongzi wrapped with reed leaves appeared, and the varieties of additional materials were more colorful. Zongzi in the north is sweet. The main raw material of zongzi is glutinous rice with red dates or candied dates, and some also use bean paste or preserved fruit. In order to increase the sweetness, some will also add sugar. Zongzi is big or small, but it is generally not smaller than a little girl's fist, and its shape is trapezoid or triangle.