Yizhou Zongzi

Zongzi is a traditional food in China, especially during the Dragon Boat Festival in May.

Yizhou people don't call zongzi but Zongba, and the making process is called "Baozongba".

making zongzi is not complicated. The sticky "big glutinous rice" is selected, washed and soaked with alkali sand, filtered and dried, and then the glutinous rice and stuffing are wrapped with fresh bamboo leaves into "packages" with different shapes, that is, zongzi. The simplest filling is a small piece of pork loin square wrapped in spiced powder; Add peanuts, mung beans, millet, lotus seeds, ginkgo, red dates, preserved duck and shredded chicken. In rural areas, Zhuang and Yao families also like to add rice beans to glutinous rice.

It's best to use fresh bamboo leaves for dumplings, which are spacious and have the fragrance of bamboo. In addition, banana leaves and yellow thatch are useful. People in Yizhou like to use straw core or grass-skiing for knotting zongzi rope.

Zongzi has various shapes. Small-sized ones only use two or two brown rice triangular dumplings, four-corner dumplings, triangular long-tail dumplings, palm-length cylindrical dumplings and pyramid dumplings; Large ones are pillow dumplings with a weight of one or two pounds or even five or six pounds of rice.

People in Yizhou like to eat zongzi hot, especially boiled zongzi. In addition, they like to eat "fried zongzi" which has no stuffing, is triangle wrapped with rice paste and put in a frying pan. Its skin is crisp, although it tastes delicious without stuffing. Cold dumplings are called cold dumplings, which have no stuffing. When wrapped, the rice is very loose, and it takes a long time to cook, and the rice is almost dissolved. It is rich in water, soft as cake after fresh leaves, golden in color, clear with refined sugar, soft and smooth, sweet and fragrant, and not greasy with throat. It is suitable for all ages and is memorable.

The most upscale street food is "steamed rice dumplings", which is a traditional snack in Yizhou. Its shape is very similar to the Egyptian pyramids, and the stuffing materials are very particular, including millet, red dates, candied dates, mung beans, peanuts, lotus seeds, ginkgo, mushrooms, fungus, pork, dried salted duck, shredded chicken, sausage, etc. The glutinous rice is not only alkali sand and borax, but also mixed with peanut oil and sesame oil. After the leaves are untied, they smell fragrant, delicious and appetizing.

Yizhou also has folk customs related to zongzi. It is absolutely necessary to make zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival. People in rural areas call it "Zongba Festival". On the Dragon Boat Festival, little girls can be seen everywhere carrying a pair of bamboo piggery cages with a length of 1 cm and a diameter of 3 cm. The piggery cages are filled with miniature cylindrical zongzi, and they play all over the village. On the third day of March, the Zhuang family offered sacrifices to the old lady Huapo, asking for children and grandchildren. They wrapped a cone-shaped zongzi with a triangular belt and a long tail, and there was a grass ring at the end of the zongzi. After the sacrifice, besides hanging the zongzi on the gods, they also took four home and hung them on both sides of the door, which meant that the old lady Huapo had been sent back. When giving birth to a child, please have a "full moon wine". As the woman's parents of grandparents, they must pack 1 zongzi and boil 1 red eggs to congratulate them, which means that their grandson will live a long life, and when he grows up, he will be the champion of "high school" and bring a "red top". After the end of the banquet, the guests can get two red eggs and two zongzi as a "packaged" gift. Although the two are not worth the money, as a folk custom, the meaning is profound and the guests happily accept it.

For thousands of years, Zongzi has always been a traditional food that Yizhou people, no matter what ethnic group, like, and it is also one of the snacks sold on the street.