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Dragon Boat Festival
Sunday, June 12, 2005-11:00 AM
Yesterday was Dragon Boat Festival. Natasha and I celebrated by eating "zongzi", bamboo leaves packed with sticky rice and some other type of filing like meat, eggs, buts, or fruit.
Natasha and I wanted to see the dragon boats race. On a tip from Peter, we headed to a bridge over the Pearl River. However, either because we arrived too late or because we were in the wrong spot (or both) we didn't see anything.
Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar. The fifth day of the fifth month 277 years B.C. that the Chinese poet Chu Yuan drowned. Now, boats are raced in a symbolic attempt to rescue him.
Also, zongzi are thrown in the water so that fish, otherwise inclined to eat the poet, will eat the zongzi instead.
The zongzi taste good. I choose to have a couple sweet ones instead of the salty ones. In addition to the rice, they were stuffed with some sort of paste, presumably made from red beans.
The worst thing about eating zongzi is keeping your hands clean. You need to use the plastic bag and bamboo leaves to protect your hands from the sticky rice.
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