The origin of zongzi is Hunan. Legend has it that the Dragon Boat Festival Rice Dumplings were created to commemorate the great patriotic poet Qu Yuan, who committed suicide by throwing himself into the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar in 278 B.C. Nearby people heard about it and brought rice balls from their homes to feed fish and shrimp in the river, and the fish and shrimp ate their fill and stopped nibbling on Qu Yuan's body. This custom has been passed down to the current Dragon Boat Festival food dumplings, and Hunan Province, Yueyang City, Miluo also became the birthplace of dumplings.

The zongzi, steamed from glutinous rice wrapped in zongzi leaves, is one of the traditional festive foods of the Chinese nation. In ancient times in the north called "corner corn", the northern production of millet, with millet to do zongzi, horn-shaped, said "corner corn". Zongzi as China's history and culture of the deepest accumulation of traditional food, the spread is also very far. Duanwu food dumplings custom, for thousands of years, in China prevailed, and spread to North Korea, Japan and Southeast Asian countries.

Folklore, eating zongzi is to pay homage to Qu Yuan who threw himself into the river and inherited. There are many kinds of zongzi, from the filling, the north has wrapped small date Beijing date zongzi; the south has green beans, pork, bean paste, eight treasures, ham, mushrooms, egg yolks and other fillings, which is represented by the Guangdong salted meat zongzi, Zhejiang Jiaxing zongzi. 2012 zongzi was selected for the documentary film "Tongue on the China" the second episode of the "staple of the story of the food" series of food one.