Tight-Knit Family Handmakes Thousands Of Leaf-Wrapped Sticky Rice Dumplings A Day

Every zongzi must be very soft and fragrant. If you don't eat zongzi, it's not called Guoduanwujie. Zongzi is a sticky rice dumpling wrapped in reed, bamboo or lotus leaves. Chinese people eat it during the Dragon Boat Festival to commemorate a patriotic poet named Qu Yuan. Legend has it he threw himself into a river as he grieved his country. Zongzi are either sweet or salty and stuffed with all sorts of fillings. This is Liang Qin. She owns a famous zongzi store in Emeishan, a city in Sichuan. Once it sold over 100,000 zongzi in a month. Different flavors appeal to different Chinese people. It depends on where they come from. Traditionally, families come together to wrap zongzi every June. Leaves are essential to the process. Zongzi is made from natural mountain dew. It has a light fragrance. It doesn't have any unpleasant smell. Local farmers grow this dotted cast iron plant in the mountains, especially for zongzi. Wang Zhidong has been doing it for almost 20 years. We follow him to the harvest. We grow zongzi in Emeishan. There are more than 10,000 zongzi in Emeishan. There are more than 1000 zongzi in Shenzhen. Zongzi is grown in the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River is full of rainwater. The climate is warm. There are fewer sunsets. After work at 10 p.m., we can't see the sun. I like the cool and humid climate. I don't need sunshine. It's cheap. I don't need to do anything. I can eat zongzi once a year. Why do you use a sickle? It's easy to cut zongzi. I can cut zongzi with a sickle. It's easy to cut zongzi with a sickle. I'm old. I can't eat zongzi. I'm old. I don't serve food to my family. I only cook food for 50 people. A bundle costs $2 to $3. Farmers like Wang also supply his leaves to stores in the area who still hand make the snack. Liang's store is one of them. During the Chinese New Year and Dragon Boat Festival, the zongzi is mostly made by hand. But we do it by hand. So a lot of our customers love our zongzi. We are a family business. Our zongzi is made one night in advance. We use the finest glutinous rice from Wuhan. So our elderly especially men can get up at five in the morning to make zongzi. Zongzi, glutinous rice, and meat, such as glutinous rice, red beans, and peas, are all very heavy. So in the morning, we buy fresh pork and add our own ingredients. Then we marinate the meat for an hour or two before making the zongzi. The way to wrap zongzi varies between regions. Here in Sichuan, they wrap it into a pyramid. In places like Guangxi or Fujian, the zongzi are rectangular. This is a traditional way to make zongzi. We have been making zongzi since we were young. We remember when we were young, we would buy a zongzi We didn't pursue fashion or avant-garde. We wanted to make zongzi with the most authentic and traditional flavors.