Dumplings festival coming soon | Food, travel, recipe & sights

Dumplings festival coming soon

chung

Two days ago, my sister-in-law gave me these home made rice dumplings or ham yuk chung. This reminds me that the festival is coming soon. Usually, this Chinese annual festival is celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, which is on 11th June, 2005.

There are several varieties of dumplings made this way. Bamboo leaves are used to wrap the rice inside and then, tied with raffia strings. Depending on the recipe, the dumplings will either be boiled for several hours or some are steamed.

The above is made from rice, meat, salted eggs, chestnut, mushroom, peanuts, white beans and other delicious Chinese ingredients like dried oysters, dried shrimps or anything people fancies.

I have one photo of the dumpling at this URL. This is a non-halal, pork version.
http://photos2.flickr.com/3274765_aaf57716f9.jpg
(I do not show photos of recipes which contain pork on this website as an understanding to my Muslims surfers/visitors. However, the photo will be available at Flickr and one need to visit Flickr for the photo.)

Beside meat dumplings, the Chinese also made plain glutinous rice dumpling that had been soaked in lye water. The rice will turn yellow and when boiled, it has a wobbly, shiny yellow effect. This dumpling is called ‘kee chang’ in Hokkien. The dumpling will then be dipped in gula melaka syrup very much like the ee nya kueh, a type of sweet, cold dessert.

There are so many different varieties of dumplings which comes from the different dialects of the Chinese. I hope to be able to get hold of the different varieties and share some photos here when they are available in the market.

I found some history related to this dumpling festival. Though it is not religious based, most Chinese observes this day and offer dumplings in prayers to their ancestors.

The dumpling festival commemorates Qu-Yuan, one of China’s greatest poets and patriots, who protested against a corrupt government. Wrongfully dismissed, he protested against the injustice and drowned himself in a river, They sought to recover his body from the river he drowned in, but it was never found.

So that his body wouldn’t be eaten by fish, the people then threw dumplings made of rice into the water for fish to eat instead of his remains and boats raced throughout the expanse of the river to find him.

Posted by on May 27th, 2005 under Festivals & Religious, Food

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No Responses to “Dumplings festival coming soon”

  1. Kat Says:
    May 27th, 2005 at 10:29 pm

    Hello. I have been following your blog for quite some time now. It reminds me so much of the food I’m missing back home. Even though there are places where I could get quite authentic M’sian food or at times when I could be bothered, I still can’t find really nice ‘Kee Chang’ or ‘Bak Chang’.

    So this year, I’m going to try and make them myselves. The trouble is I’m not quite sure how to wrap them! Even my mom doesn’t know it since it’s always my great-aunt that does all the wrapping. Is there any pictures or links that you might have showing how to wrap one? I’ve tried Google, but it only gave me irrelevant websites.

    Anyway, just want to say keep up the good work. I love your blogs! :)

  2. boo_licious Says:
    May 28th, 2005 at 4:07 am

    Yes, dumpling festival is coming up, yum. My aunt always makes dumplings at home so I am trying to persuade her to let me see how she wraps it. Hopefully she agrees as I really want to document it.

  3. Eileen Chua Says:
    May 29th, 2005 at 7:52 am

    ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!

    Gonna miss having this again this year. My aunts make bak changs every year. Yummy yummy!!

    Must call Aunty to freeze some for me!! :P

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