The origin and symbolism of the green dumplings are as follows:

One year during the Ching Ming Festival, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's right-hand man, Chen Taiping, was pursued by the Qing soldiers, and a farmer plowing nearby came forward to help him, disguising himself as a farmer and plowing his own land with Chen Taiping. Not having captured Chen Taiping, the Qing soldiers did not let up, so they set up additional guards in the village, and every person leaving the village was inspected to prevent them from bringing food to Chen Taiping.

After returning home, the farmer was pondering what to bring to Chen Taiping, when he stepped on a clump of mugwort and slipped, and when he got up, he saw that his hands and knees were stained with a greenish color. He was so impressed that he hurriedly picked some mugwort and went home to wash it, boil it and squeeze the juice, knead it into the glutinous rice flour and make a rice ball.

Then he put the green dumplings in the grass, and mixed them with the sentries at the entrance of the village. Chen Taiping ate the green dumplings and found them fragrant, sticky and not sticky. After dark, he bypassed the Qing sentries and returned safely to the base camp. Later, Li Xiu Cheng ordered the Taiping army to learn how to make green dumplings to protect themselves from the enemy. The custom of eating green dumplings was then spread.

Second, the meaning

1, to honor the ancestors, reunion

In the south, Qingming Festival to eat green dumplings is very common. Eating green dumplings is like its name, meaning reunion. It is also meant to honor ancestors and express thoughts of them.

Eating reunion on Qingming Festival is like eating dumplings on Dragon Boat Festival and mooncakes on Mid-Autumn Festival. It has a certain significance. Eating green dumplings on Qingming Festival is mainly to commemorate the ancestor's sacrifice; however, with the development of society, the function of green dumplings as a kind of sacrifice is increasingly fading, and more and more people are using them as spring snacks.

2. It means new hope and new life

In ancient times, Qingming Festival was also the season of new and old. It was a spring, so it meant new hope and new life. Therefore, on the Qingming Festival, every family would eat green dumplings to pray for a prosperous population and family.

Introduction of Variations of Green Dumplings in Different Places:

Green Dumplings are called and eaten differently in different places, for example, they are called Green Dumplings in Ningbo area of Shanghai and Qingming Dumplings in Hangzhou area, which are stuffed with pickled vegetables, tofu, and cured meat in addition to the bean paste stuffing, but also with savory taste. In Sichuan, there are Qingming vegetable poi, while in Guizhou, green dumplings are called Qingming poi, and in the Hakka region, green dumplings are called ai, which is the collective name for all kinds of glutinous rice and sticky rice pastries in Hakka dialect.

The green dumplings are the food symbol of Qingming in Jiangnan, the southern region alone, as the green dumplings, there are a number of "variations", the most common filling wrapped in bean paste or egg yolk, rolled into a small bulging doughnut. Over the years, the classic models of green dumplings are also constantly improving the filling, some novelty sour plum filling, salted meat filling also appeared in the market.