Green as jade, waxy and soft, fragrant, fat but not greasy, it is a natural green healthy snack. Generally, authentic green balls are made of the green juice of fresh wormwood. But now people have more and more ways to make green balls. Some of them use straw and other green vegetable juices, not just wormwood.
The name of the youth league and the way to eat it are different from place to place. For example, Ningbo, Shanghai is called the Youth League, and Hangzhou is called the Qingming Tuanzi. The stuffing inside is not only bean paste, but also salty, with pickles, tofu and bacon. Sichuan has green food Baba, and Guizhou's youth league is called Qingming Baba. In Hakka area, Youth League is called Aizan, which is a general term for all kinds of glutinous rice and sticky rice cakes in Hakka dialect. ?
The Youth League is a symbol of Jiangnan cuisine. Just like the youth league in the south, there are many "variants". The most common filling is wrapped in bean paste or egg yolk and kneaded into small round dumplings. Over the years, the classic youth league has been constantly improving the stuffing, and some novel sour plum stuffing and salted meat stuffing have also appeared in the market.
The origin and meaning of the Youth League
In the Qing Dynasty, a scholar named Li Xiucheng was chased by Qing soldiers, and a farmer helped him escape the Qing soldiers. The Qing soldiers added soldiers to set up posts, and Li Xiucheng was not allowed to eat food. So the farmer picked the wormwood bag and wrapped it in jiaozi, mixed it in the grass and escaped the sentry. Li Xiucheng also ate jiaozi and returned to the base camp safely, which spread the youth league.
Eating a reunion dinner in Tomb-Sweeping Day is like eating zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival and mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival, which has certain implications. Tomb-Sweeping Day eats dumplings mainly to commemorate the ancestor's sacrifice. But nowadays, with the development of society, the function of the Youth League as a sacrifice is gradually weakening, and more people regard it as a spring outing snack.