Zongzi (rice dumplings) in Various Countries and Regions
By admin on 2015-01-30

It is a Chinese tradition to eat rice dumplings, or Zongzi, at the Dragon Boat Festival. However, the custom of eating rice dumplings is also observed in some other countries and regions around the world.

The rice dumplings in Vietnam are wrapped with banana leaves in round or square shape. In their opinion, the round rice dumplings represent the heaven, while the square ones stand for the earth, which together symbolize the unity of heaven and earth as well as great fortune and auspice. People make and eat rice dumplings at the Dragon Boat Festival to pray for seasonable weather, so as to receive a bumper grain harvest in the year.

Most of the rice dumplings made and eaten at Water-splashing Festival and in raining seasons are sweet. People would use banana leaves to wrap the sticky rice that has been soaked in coconut juice together with the coconut meat, black bean, taro and pachyrhizus. The steamed rice dumplings are light green in color with a faint scent.

In Japan, people would use the milled rice flour instead of the sticky rice to make the rice dumplings in a hammer shape which is different from that in China. The rice dumplings are called “ちまき(茅の叶で巻いたからいう)” in Japan, which is made by wrapping the rice flour with bamboo leaves or Zizania caduciflora leaves in a long cylinder shape on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month of the year.

The rice dumplings in North Korea are called the “wheel cake”. People would boil the fresh Artemisia leaves before smashing them and then put them into the rice flour which would be kneaded into a wheel shape. It is quite delicious.

The Philippines prefer the long rice dumplings, which are regarded as a necessity for their Christmas Day.

The rice dumplings in Costarica are made with the specially-processed sticky corn flour as the main materials as well as the chicken, beef, carrot, white potato, sometimes with beef broth poured on and then wrapped with fresh banana leaves into a flat square shape.

Rice dumplings of the Yao ethnic group are made of sticky rice together with preserved ham stripes and green bean, which look like a pillow and weigh about 250g each. Some would add brown sugar and peanuts in the sticky rice to make vegetarian rice dumplings.

Rice dumplings in the She ethnic group are commonly referred to as Gujiao. People would use bamboo leaves to wrap the sticky rice into a four-angle shape and then tie them up with Dragon grass (a kind of float grass), ten in a bunch. Some rice dumplings would be stuffed with vegetables, meat and red jujube. Generally boiled in barilla water, the steamed rice dumplings look yellow in color  and could be kept for half a month.