The origin of Qingming Fruit is related to Chen Taiping and its meaning is reunion.

The origin of Qingming Fruit:

In the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, Chen Taiping, the right-hand general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's "Loyal King" Li Xiucheng, was chased by the Qing soldiers, and was saved by a farmer's rice dumpling made of mugwort. Chen Taiping ate the dumplings and found them fragrant, sticky and non-sticky. Later, Li Xiu Cheng ordered the Taiping army to learn how to make green dumplings to protect themselves from the enemy, and the custom of eating green dumplings spread.

Significance of Qingming Fruit:

As an important dietary custom of Qingming Festival, Qingming Fruit is closely related to Qingming Festival itself. It is also called "Qingming Ba", "Qingming Baozi" and "Qingming Artemisia Ba". Especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, Qingming fruit is known as "Qingming dumplings", Amy fruit. Meaning reunion, as round as its shape.

The development of Qingming fruit

The green dumplings are called and eaten differently in different places, for example, in Shanghai, Ningbo area is called green dumplings, Hangzhou area is called Qingming Dumplings, which is stuffed with pickled vegetables, tofu, and cured meat in addition to the bean paste filling, but also with salty mouth. In Sichuan, there are Qingming vegetable poi, while in Guizhou, the green dumplings are called Qingming poi, and in the Hakka region, the green dumplings are called Aiqi, 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 style of green dumplings are also improving the filling, some novelty sour plum filling, salted meat filling also appeared in the market.

There is another type of food in the southern region that is similar to the green dumplings and is mainly popular among the Hakka people in the south: again, the dough is made from mugwort leaves as the basic ingredient, pressed into a thick round cake and steamed on the leaves, or made into hand-sized dumplings in the shape of this type of green dumplings locally known as ai kuey teow or ai poi, some of which do not have fillings and pay more attention to the aroma of the mugwort, and some of which are made with white granulated sugar and black and white sesame seeds as inner filling for sweetness.