The record of Zongzi in history was first seen in Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in Han Dynasty. The word "Zongzi" is written as "Yi", and "Shuo Wen Xin Fu"? "Mi Bu" means "Sui, reed leaves are wrapped in rice. From the rice, it is squeaky. " "Shuo Wen? Yan: "Hey, it's enough." When a bird flies, it converges its legs and claws. "set rhyme? Send rhyme: "hey, the corner is also." Or make dumplings. "
Zongzi, also known as "Jiao Shu", was first recorded in the local customs of the Western Jin Dynasty: "The fifth day in midsummer, Fang Bo is extremely harmonious. Enjoy corn and tortoise scales in Shunde. Note: the end is also the beginning, which means the fifth day of May. Four zhong is Fang Bo. The custom is heavy on May 5th, the same as the summer solstice. (the same as "duck"), Chunfu chicks, to the summer solstice, are all allowed to spit. First of all, the first two festivals are one day, and then sticky rice is wrapped in leaves, mixed with millet, cooked with pure gray juice, and the second festival is still good. ..... wrapped in sticky rice, a' glutinous rice' and a' horn millet', covering the image that Yin and Yang are still intertwined and wrapped up. "
In Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty, it was clearly stated that millet was wrapped in leaves and cooked into food in the shape of sharp corners or palm leaves, so it was called "angular millet" or "zongzi".
After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, rice dumplings were mostly wrapped in glutinous rice, so they were called rice dumplings instead of corn.
Wu Jun (467-520) of the Southern Dynasties wrote in "Harmony of Continuation": "Qu Yuan died in Miluo on May 5th, and the Chu people mourned it. Every day, rice is stored in bamboo tubes and sacrificed in water. During the Han Dynasty's military construction, Changsha returned to Europe. During the day, I suddenly saw a man who called himself Dr. San Lv and said,' You should see the sacrifice. It's very kind. But it is often left behind and stolen by bitter dragons. If there is any benefit today, you can put neem leaves on it and tie it with colorful silk. These two things are also feared by the dragon. " Back to his words. The world makes zongzi with five-colored silk and neem leaves, all of which are the legacy of Miluo. "
Another saying is that people are afraid that Qu Yuan's body will be eaten by fish in the river, so they wrap zongzi and throw them into the river to feed the fish.
The view that Zongzi is associated with Qu Yuan is widely spread because of its romanticism. In 340 BC, Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet and doctor of the State of Chu, faced with the pain of national subjugation. On May 5, he threw a big stone into the Guluo River in grief and indignation. In order not to make fish and shrimp damage his body, people threw rice in bamboo tubes into the river one after another. In the future, in order to show respect and nostalgia for Qu Yuan, people would put rice in bamboo tubes and throw it into the river to pay homage. This is the origin of the earliest zongzi in China-"tube zongzi".
Why did you wrap zongzi with wormwood leaves or reed leaves and lotus leaves later? There is such a record in the Book of Beginners: During the Jianwu period of the Han Dynasty, Changsha people dreamed of a man who claimed to be Dr. San Lv (the official name of Qu Yuan) at night and said to him, "Everything you sacrificed was stolen by the dragon in the river, so you can wrap it with wormwood leaves and tie up the five-color silk thread in the future. The dragon is most afraid of these two things." As a result, people made "horn millet" with "leaves wrapped in millet", which was passed down from generation to generation and gradually developed into the Dragon Boat Festival food in China. Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, after eating Jiuzi Zongzi in the palace during the Dragon Boat Festival, Long Yan was overjoyed and full of praise, and happily wrote a poem: "The four seasons are so beautiful that Jiuzi Zongzi strives for novelty."
Jiuzi Zongzi is a kind of zongzi, that is, nine zongzi are connected in a string, big and small, with the big one on the top and the small one on the bottom. They have different shapes and are very beautiful, and they are made of nine colors of silk thread. Jiuzi Zongzi is mostly used as a gift for relatives and friends, such as a gift from mother to married daughter and a gift from mother-in-law to newly married daughter-in-law. Because "Zongzi" is homophonic for "neutron", there is a folk saying that eating "Zongzi" can give birth to a son.