The Chinese tradition of zongzi dumplings explained

Thursday, 22 June 2023

Wendy Zhang, owner of the Red Bowl Chinese Restaurant in Riccarton, serves zongzi to her customers.

Today is the shortest day of the year, it is also the day Chinese Kiwis got to enjoy two different traditional dishes.

In China, the winter solstice is celebrated with dumplings, while the Dragon Boat festival is marked with zongzi, a rice dish that comes wrapped in bamboo leaves.

It is rare that both significant days fall on the same date.

For one Christchurch restaurant the “two special foods” meant a busy day, especially when a bus full of Chinese tourists arrived.

“It’s quite special as the two festivals fall on the same day,” said Wendy Zhang, owner of the Red Bowl restaurant, in Mandeville St.

Zhang prepares the traditional rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves.

“We’ve sold hundreds of dumplings just for the day, and over 600 zongzi this week.”

Preparing the dishes is very time-consuming and involves many stages, she said.

“It takes at least three days preparing the food. We need dried bamboo leaves imported from China and soak them in cold water for a day or two.

“We also need to soak the glutinous rice in cold water for a day, so they will become tender and sticky.”

Zongzi, or glutinous rice balls in bamboo leaves, are special food for celebrating the Dragon Boat festival.

After wrapping the rice balls in the leaves, it takes “at least three hours” to boil them before they are served.

Traditionally, Chinese people would eat dumplings on the winter solstice, to keep warm during the long night.

While zongzi – pronounced dzongdzuh – is associated with the Dragon Boat festival, which occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month on the lunar calendar.

It is held to commemorate Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet of the state of Chu during the Warring States period (475-221 BC).

He threw himself in the Miluo River after learning of the defeat of his state, prompting local people to throw zongzi into the river to feed the fish, so they wouldn’t eat Qu’s body.

Zhang says traditional food is a way that Chinese Kiwis can remember their roots.

They also sat on long, narrow paddle boats, known as dragon boats, and made loud noises to scare the fish away.

Food plays a big part in Chinese culture, with special dishes to celebrate almost every festival, such as mooncake for the mid-Autumn Festival.

“We want to pass on our tradition, rituals and culture to our next generation living in New Zealand,” said Zhang, who also chairs the Christchurch Zhonghua Chinese Society.

“Food is the best way to do [that]. We make different foods for different festivals. In doing so, our children in New Zealand would have ‘a Chinese stomach’, and are more likely to remember their cultural roots.”

In general, northern Chinese people prefer sweet zongzi, which has Chinese dates, and red bean paste in it and drizzled with some acacia honey, while southerners like them savoury, with salted duck egg yolk and meat.

“Local Kiwis are not a big fan of savoury zongzi, to be honest,” said Zhang.

“So I changed the fillings to chicken, sweet Cantonese sausage and glutinous rice.”

She has sold “a dozen” zongzi to local Kiwis who dine in her restaurant regularly and “were curious about the special food for the festival”.

Additional reporting by Eve Hyslop.