Zongzi is a traditional food in China, especially the Dragon Boat Festival in May, and it is also an essential food for festivals.
Yizhou people call it Zongzi instead of Zongzi, and the production process is called "Baozongba".
Making zongzi is not complicated. Pick out the sticky "big sticky rice", wash it, soak it in alkali sand, filter it, dry it, and then wrap the sticky rice and stuffing with fresh bamboo leaves into "dumplings" with different shapes, that is, zongzi. The simplest filling is a small piece of pork tenderloin wrapped in spiced powder; Add peanuts, mung beans, millet, lotus seeds, ginkgo, red dates, preserved duck and shredded chicken. In rural areas, Zhuang and Yao families also like to add Mi Dou to glutinous rice.
It is best to wrap jiaozi with fresh bamboo leaves, which are spacious and have the fragrance of bamboo. In addition, banana leaves and yellow thatch are useful. Yizhou people like to tie zongzi rope with grass core or grass skiing.
Zongzi has various shapes. Small ones only use two or two brown rice triangular dumplings, four-corner dumplings, triangular long-tail dumplings, palm-long cylindrical dumplings and pyramid dumplings; The big one is jiaozi, a pillow core weighing one or two kilograms or even five or six kilograms.
Yizhou people like to eat hot zongzi, especially boiled zongzi. In addition, they also like to eat "fried zongzi" with no stuffing, triangular rice paste and oil pan. Its skin is crisp, although it is delicious without stuffing. Cold jiaozi is called cold jiaozi, and there is no stuffing. When it was wrapped, the rice was very loose, and it took a long time to cook, and the rice was almost dissolved. Rich in water, fresh leaves are as soft as cakes, golden in color, clear in refined sugar, soft, smooth and sweet, and not greasy in throat moistening. Suitable for all ages, with endless aftertaste.
The top street snack is "steamed dumplings", which is a traditional snack in Yizhou. Its shape is very similar to the Egyptian pyramids, and its fillings are very particular, including millet, red dates, candied dates, mung beans, peanuts, lotus seeds, ginkgo, mushrooms, fungus, pork, dried salted duck, shredded chicken, sausage and so on. In addition to alkali sand and borax, glutinous rice is also mixed with peanut oil and sesame oil. After the leaves are untied, they smell delicious and appetizing.
Yizhou also has folk customs related to zongzi. It is absolutely necessary to make zongzi on Dragon Boat Festival. People in the countryside call it "Zongba Festival". On the Dragon Boat Festival, little girls can be seen everywhere carrying a pair of bamboo pigsty cages with a length of 10 cm and a diameter of 3 cm. Pigsty cages are filled with miniature cylindrical zongzi, playing in the whole village. On the third day of March, the dealer offered sacrifices to the old lady Hua Po, begging for her children and grandchildren. They wrapped a cone-shaped zongzi with a triangular belt and a long tail, and there was a grass circle at the end of the zongzi. After the sacrifice, in addition to hanging zongzi on the gods, four zongzi were taken home and hung on both sides of the door, indicating that the old lady Huapo had been sent back. When giving birth to a baby, please drink a glass of "full moon wine". As the parents of the woman's grandparents, they must pack 100 zongzi and cook 100 red eggs to congratulate them, which means that their grandchildren will live a long life and grow up to be the number one scholar in "high school" with a "red top". After the banquet, guests can get two red eggs and two zongzi as "packaged" gifts. Although they are not valuable, as folk customs, they are of profound significance and are readily accepted by guests.
For thousands of years, Zongzi has been a traditional food that Yizhou people like no matter which nationality, and it is also one of the snacks sold on the street.