Zongzi: A Legendary Delicious Rice Dumplings

zongzi	Qu Yuan

The origins of rice dumplings are traced to the Chinese legend of Qu Yuan, a well-loved patriot poet who drowned himself in a river called "Mi Luo", due to the imminent fall of his country Chu, which was one of the ancient Chinese kingdoms. To prevent the fish in the river from eating his body, people made rice dumplings and threw them into the river
Today's Zongzi is made similarly, with a serving of rice wrapped in leaves and tied together with string. The way the string is wound and kontted tells waht ingredients are inside.
There are a lot of different kinds of zongzi, each with its own particular flavor, shape, and type of leaf for wrapping. Zongzi is usually four-sided with pointed, rounded ends, or pyramid shapes. Sometimes it is in the shape of a cone or cylinder. The glutinous rice mixture us wrapped in leaves of wild rice, palm or bamboo. Bamboo-leaf zongzi is a specialty of South China.
As for flavor, the Beijing style is the sweetest, with coarse bean paste. Guangdong zongzi is either sweet-tasting, with walnut, date or bean, or salty with filling ham, egg, meat, roast chicken.