Five-color glutinous rice is the traditional festival food of what ethnic group

Five-color glutinous rice is a traditional snack of many ethnic groups such as the Buyi and Zhuang.

Five-color glutinous rice, commonly known as five-color rice, also known as wu rice, green essence rice or flower rice, because the glutinous rice is generally black, red, yellow, purple, white five colors and so named. Every year on the third day of the third month of the lunar calendar or the Qingming Festival, people of all ethnic groups in Guangxi generally make five-color glutinous rice. The Zhuang people love the five-color glutinous rice, and regard it as a symbol of good luck and good harvest.

Whenever there are traditional folk festivals such as Ching Ming Festival, March 3, April 8 (Cow King Festival) and Dragon Boat Festival. The Zhuang people like to make five-color glutinous rice to eat in every household, and every household has to make five-color glutinous rice in order to catch a song to eat, or to offer ancestor sacrifices to the gods.

This flavorful food and ancestral entertainment activities together, full of national and local interest. Family, relatives, friends, lovers often **** taste five-color glutinous rice, natural and particularly fragrant.

Five-color glutinous rice is also the Miao people's mascot, said life like a hundred flowers, symbolizing the people of all ethnic groups such as glutinous rice balls united together, fighting heaven and earth, green, black are taken from three kinds of natural pigments in the leaf juice, yellow taken from the yellow rice flower corolla boiled out of the natural pigments, a few kinds of plant pigments steamed, that is, the five-color glutinous rice.

Five-color glutinous rice origin

Legend One:

Anciently, there was a young man named Tenon in the Zhuang village, his father died long ago, only with his mother paralyzed in bed. Tenon was very filial to his mother, afraid of his mother alone at home boredom, sometimes go up the mountain to cut firewood or rice planting in the field are carrying his mother to go with him.

And every time, he brought a big bag of his mother's favorite glutinous rice with him, so that she could eat it whenever she was hungry, and this action was detected by a monkey on the mountain.

On one occasion, while Tenon was chopping wood on the other side of the mountain, the monkey snuck up to his mother and snatched a big bag of steaming sticky rice away from her. The mother was unable to move and could only watch as the monkey snatched the sticky rice. It happened several times in a row, and Tenon was a little helpless.

Looking at his mother, who was starving, Tenon pulled the maple leaf around him and thought about how to prevent the monkey from stealing the rice. Suddenly, Tenon realized that his hand was stained black, so he immediately cut the maple leaves from the tree, mashed them, soaked them in water, and then soaked the glutinous rice in the black liquid.

The next day, the black glutinous rice was picked up and steamed, and a fragrance filled the house. The mother shouted in the house, "What smells so good? The Ternon excitedly said, Dabaa (Dabaa is a Zhuang language, meaning mother), this is the black glutinous rice, how fragrant and sweet ah! This day is the third day of the third month of the lunar calendar.

In the early morning, Tenon took his mother up the mountain to cut firewood, and he wrapped the black glutinous rice in banana leaves and deliberately showed a little black color. When the monkey saw such a big black mass, he thought that Tenon was luring it with some poison, and he didn't dare to touch it, so he fled.

This day, Teunon ate black glutinous rice, his mouth was not dry, and he did not feel tired, but he felt strong, and he got more firewood. From then on, Tenon and his mother went to the mountains to cut wood, all with black glutinous rice, no longer need to worry about monkeys to take away the glutinous rice.

Afterwards, the strong family members all learn from Tenon, every family learns to do black glutinous rice, and then gradually with yellow gardenia, red bluegrass and so on made yellow, red, purple glutinous rice, gradually evolved into nowadays five-color glutinous rice. It becomes one of the favorite flavor food of Zhuang family.

Legend 2:

Legend has it that a superbly talented Zhuang man, Wei Da Gui, served as a minister under the earth emperor. One year there was a severe drought, and in order to relieve the people's suffering, he invited the emperor to visit the Zhuang township, and used a trick to make the emperor exempt from the imperial grain. The emperor later realized that he had been tricked and regarded Dagui as a thorn in his side, and ordered him to be arrested and brought to justice. When the people of Zhuangxiang heard about this, they sent Dagui to hide in the mountains. When the Emperor's soldiers couldn't catch him, they set fire to the mountain.

That day was the third day of the third month of the lunar calendar. After the imperial soldiers left, the townspeople found Dagui's body in the hole of a big maple tree, and buried him beside the maple tree with tears in their eyes. And it just so happened that the emperor was bitten to death by a five-colored snake. Therefore, every March 3 in the future, the Zhuang people use the maple leaves and other plant pigment juice to dye the glutinous rice into red, yellow, purple and black colors, steamed and then take it to the mountain to offer sacrifices.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Glutinous Rice in Five Colors