Youth League is a traditional snack in the south of the Yangtze River. It is blue, mixed with the juice of wormwood into glutinous rice flour, and then wrapped with bean paste or lotus paste. Not sweet or greasy, the fragrance is light but long. It can also be made of other green leafy vegetable juices and glutinous rice flour, and then stuffed with bean paste.
Qingyuan Festival is a traditional snack that people in the south of the Yangtze River eat in Tomb-Sweeping Day. According to textual research, the name of the Youth League began in the Tang Dynasty with a history of about 1000 years. In Tomb-Sweeping Day, Qing Tuan was almost always steamed. In ancient times, people made green balls mainly as sacrifices. Although the Youth League has been circulated for thousands of years, its shape has not changed, but its function as a sacrifice has gradually faded and it has become a seasonal snack. Green as jade, tender and smooth, fragrant, fat but not fat, is a natural green healthy snack.
Changes around the youth league
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. In the south, the Youth League calls it Ai Ai or Ai Ai. Some of them pay more attention to the fragrance of wormwood without stuffing, while others use white sugar and black and white sesame seeds as stuffing for sweetness.