The Dragon Boat Festival Means Time for Rice Dumplings (粽子)

While summer doesn't officially begin until late June in the West, the summer solstice in the East arrives today, which coincides with the fifth day of the fifth month of this lunar year, a holiday named Duan Wu 端午 in Mandarin.

The lunar summer solstice, also known as Dragon Boat Festival for the custom of having dragon boat races on the holiday, is time for local Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants to have a special rice dish, named zong zi（粽子, pronounced as dsong-dse) in Mandarin and bánh tro in Vietnamese. Some call it a "rice dumpling"in English, though it bears no physical resemblance to the flour-wrapped dumpling.

The rice dish comes in a fist-sized, dried-leaf-wrapped pyramid or cube that looks like the Mexican tamale, or tamal, but is wrapped with bamboo leaves instead of corn husks, and has glutinous rice, not cornmeal, as its main ingredient.

A variety of zong zi have been on display at local Chinese markets since about two weeks ago. Most of them contain pieces of stewed pork, salted egg yolk, and boiled peanuts. Vegetarian ones have similar ingredients, but with beans or dried tofu in lieu of pork. There are also sweet ones, with a sugary stuffing in the rice, for dessert.

 It's rare for a  Chinese restaurant to serve zong zi, as they can't beat the around-$2-each price at the local markets. However, in Los Altos prepared 1,000 sweet mini zong zi as complimentary dessert for lucky customers seeing Chef Lawrence Chu himself during the past weekend and today. The give-away will end as soon as the zong zi run out.

“We are doing this to celebrate Dragon Boat Festival, and to give Americans some knowledge about the Chinese holiday,” said Chu. “We are not just a restaurant. We are a cultural center to our American customers.”

hosted the “Dragon Boat Golf Tournament” on Sunday. About 80 participants had dinner afterwards at Chef Chu's, where sweet mini zong zi were served as dessert. Chu spoke at the banquet about the history behind Dragon Boat Festival.

According to Chu and other sources, the ancient Chinese believed the sun was exactly in the middle of the sky at noon on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which therefore marked the beginning of summer. But the holiday has meant far more than the Chinese summer solstice since it originated as a day of commemoration for a patriotic poet, Qu Yuan (340-278 BC).

During the period of Warring States, there were seven kingdoms in the territory of today’s China, and Qu Yuan once held a high ranking position in the Chu Kingdom, the southernmost one of the seven.

Qu (which is his family name, as the Chinese put the surname first) had great strategies to keep Chu strong. But other officials who were jealous of him, spread rumors about him, and eventually persuaded the king to banish him.

Qu spent the next 20 years in exile until the Qin Kingdom conquered his beloved Chu Kingdom. Then he drowned himself in the Miluo, a tributary of the Yangtze, on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month that year.

Many sympathizers took their boats out in an attempt to save him. When they finally gave up searching, they decided to wrap rice with reed or bamboo leaves and throw the little packs into the Miluo in hopes that the fish would eat the rice rather than Qu’s body. Keeping the corpse intact was the way of showing ultimate respect for the deceased in Chinese culture.

To commemorate Qu Yuan, villagers threw leaf-wrapped rice into the Miluo and rowed boats on the river every anniversary of his death. The rice dish making and the boat rowing gradually evolved into nationwide holiday customs, which later spread through East Asia as well as Southeast Asia, and eventually followed Chinese, Korean, Singaporean and Vietnamese immigrants to America.

There are dragon boat races in San Francisco, but rarely in Silicon Valley, where the Dragon Boat Festival is generally just celebrated through the consumption of the special rice dish associated with the cultural holiday.

stores in , , and call the rice dish "rice dumplings" on their English signs. All of these stores carry many imported rice dumplings in the frozen food section, and some fresh in the hot deli.

in Cupertino displays four kinds of homemade zong zi in big boxes. Those fresh out of the steamer feel warm to the touch, and are aromatic. But James and Jane Liu, a married couple who are regular shoppers there, said they are not buying any of the Marina Food zong zi  because they ordered Shanghai-style ones from a home business.

“We prefer the Shanghai-style because the rice is soaked in the sauce before steaming, and that makes the flavor permeate the rice,” said James Liu. “If it's Cantonese or Taiwanese style, the rice is bland and you'll have to use soy sauce as a dip. But you don't have to if it's Shanghai style.”

Another Cupertino resident, Sophia Chang, bought some sweet zong zi stuffed with azuki bean (a grain-sized dark red bean) paste after her disappointment with the three savory kinds available at Marina Food.

“I'm going to give the sweet ones a try,” said Chang. “The savory ones here don't have black mushrooms. I miss those with black mushrooms I had in Taiwan. You just can't find them here.”

In fact, there are zong zi with black mushrooms at in Cupertino. Not all the Fantasia stores carry them as a snack item, but the Cupertino store, the first one in the chain founded by Taiwanese immigrants, does all year round. The Chinese actually may eat zong zi any time of the year while they are a must-have for Dragon Boat Festival.

As the large Vietnamese community in Silicon Valley shares the cultural holiday with Chinese Americans, Marina Food Market in Milpitas carries bánh tro.

A distinctive ingredient in bánh tro  is mung beans, which are grain-sized in a yellowish olive green color. While the Chinese usually use mung beans to make desserts, the Vietnamese put them in savory bánh tro.

Another difference is the Vietnamese use of bananas, rather than azuki bean paste, in sweet bánh tro.

 Jean Yeh, a Vietnamese American living in Milpitas, said she will buy some bánh tro from the Milpitas store of Marina Food for her big family, though she used to make bánh tro at home.

“Actually you can buy bamboo leaves, sticky rice and other ingredients from the market to make your own,” said Yeh. “But it's a lot of work. It's much easier to just buy bánh tro.”