Duanwu Memory

"The festival is divided into the Dragon Boat Festival since who said, the ancient rumors for Qu Yuan", a talk about Dragon Boat Festival, we all naturally think of Qu Yuan, the patriotic hero. The Dragon Boat Festival originated in China, initially the Chinese people to get rid of diseases and prevent epidemics of the festival, before the Spring and Autumn period, Wu Yue's land in the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar in the form of a dragon boat race held in the tribal totem sacrifices custom, part of the region also commemorates the jie zi tui, wu zixu, cao e and other sayings. But for me, it's more about honoring my childhood days.

In my memory, the Dragon Boat Festival is the "Zongzi Festival". The family began to prepare all kinds of materials for wrapping the dumplings in mid-April. The leaves of the dumplings are the most important and the most complicated material of the process. The leaves we use are not ordinary art leaves, but Le Gu. Le Gu, also known as "cross the ancient", for the perennial evergreen plants, leaves long and thin, half a palm wide or so, cross-section into a "W", three convex margins have sash. Its fruit like pineapple, but astringent flavor, no one to take. Le Gu leaf surface clean, aromatic flavor, with it wrapped before the dumplings must first use the hook knife mowed Le Gu, with the cloth group along the edge of the perforated to remove its perforated, then cleaned, and finally with boiling water to kill the green. So a piece of soft, smooth and flat, banded Le Gu dumpling leaves became, good Le Gu leaves rolled up can be preserved for a few months. It took Grandma three to four days to prepare the leaves, which was what we looked forward to the most. In the past, there was nothing to play with in the village, so we used to wait for the Dragon Boat Festival to take the Le Gu and weave it into various toys, such as windmills, waterwheels and grasshopper cages, and then use it to roll up into conch shells or flutes to play when we were herding cows, which was a wonderful time.

Additionally, the material that needs to be processed is the reed, an aquatic plant used to tie the dumplings. Reeds grow alongside irrigation ditches, riverbanks, swamps, etc., and are called reeds in our part of the world. Whenever my grandmother came back from her cattle ranching, she always had an extra bundle of reeds in her hand. She used to say that reeds are our necessities, the old generation used it to prepare mats, and now we use it to wrap rice dumplings, and it is easy to store, and it will also have a fresh fragrance. Unfortunately, with the arrival of water pollution, the reeds are less and less, folks have to replace the reeds with bamboo gimlets when wrapping the dumplings, although the same strong, but it seems to be less flavor.

Over the years, I've been studying abroad, and the dumplings at home have made me most proud and homesick. Because I went to the place have not encountered such dumplings, even the cottage version can not be seen, the opportunity to see the people also did not. I love the dumplings at home, especially the filling. Every time I make rice dumplings, the filling is made by the chef's grandfather. Every time, Grandpa would make dumpling fillings that were different from those of the neighboring families, sometimes with more shrimp, sometimes with more of a certain kind of home-grown beans. The only thing that was the same was the absence of this plant of the Piperaceae family, Piper betel. It's a delicious condiment widely used in the south, and we often use its leaves to wrap dumplings. Wrapping fat pork with the leaves of Clam Piper as filling, firstly, it can eliminate the fatness of pork, and secondly, it can neutralize the dampness and heat of glutinous rice, and get rid of heat and poison. In addition, the flavor of its leaves is no less than that of perilla leaves, which also have a special aroma. Clam piper is plentiful and wild in the gardens near my old home. My favorite thing is to pick the piper betel, wash it and wait for my grandmother to wrap the dumplings, the residual aroma in my hand is still unforgettable. Sometimes the clam piper leaves picked more, grandpa used it to wrap the meat to fry to cook, and is a good dish.

After all the preparations, what remains is to test the technique of wrapping the rice dumplings and the heat. The way of wrapping the Le Gu Zong and the traditional Hakka Zong is almost the same, but the strength is not enough to wrap the angular zongzi, such as my masterpiece, will always be flat and flat. My grandmother would always say, "Your dumplings don't look good and don't taste good, they fall apart without being cooked. Despite the blow, I still learned in the same way, hoping that one day my children and grandchildren would envy me as much as I envied my grandmother's good rice dumplings. The wrapped dumplings are put into a big pot, boiled over a large wood fire and then stewed overnight over a small wood fire. Every night when the rice dumplings are cooked is a sleepless night for grandma. Because of the need to master the fire, every few hours grandma has to get up once, really every Dragon Boat Festival offer dumplings, a true love an inch of heart. The next day's zongxiang always make people can't wait to uncover the lid of the pot, pick up the hot, chubby zongxiang, untie the knot with a reed tie, take off the zongxiang Le Gu "leather jacket", in front of the eyes of a zongxiang angle is clear, glutinous grains full, crystal clear snacks. And the filling of the clam vulgar wrapped meat flavor is really point to the bottom of your heart, not too strong, not too light, just right, that chewy, that flavor will make you never forget. Sometimes grandma in order to please the greedy children, will also pack a few old-fashioned square pillow-like dumplings, we call "pillow dumplings". The same recipe, the same flavor, just different sizes.

These beautiful memories with the delicious Le Gu dumplings gradually deep in the mind, now Le Gu less, reed no, a corner of the village is still left with some sporadic clams, grandparents are also old, Dragon Boat Festival home is not necessarily fortunate enough to taste such a delicious. Nowadays, the flavor of the dumplings has changed, and the dumplings are wrapped at the Dragon Boat Festival.