Rice Dumpling or Bak Chang

With Duan Wu Festival is around the corner, most of us will be making rice meat dumplings or just buy from the local market.
Rice dumpling festival 端午节 falls on the fifth day of the fifth moon of the Chinese lunar calendar. This year fall on 28 May 2009.


Do you know there is a interesting story behind the dumplings. It commemorates the death of Qu Yuan 屈原, a poet from the kingdom of Chu who lived during the Warring States period. Qu Yuan tried unsuccessfully to warn his emperor against the threat of their Qin neighbors. When the Qin Dynasty overtook Yingdu, the Chu capital, in 278 BC, the patriotic Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Miluo River. According to legend, bak chang (in Hokkien) or rice dumplings 粽子 were thrown by his countrymen into the river to prevent fish from eating the poet's body.