The Story of Food: An Exploration of the Origin, Variety and Culture of Rice Dumplings

01, the origin of rice dumplings

In the Eastern Han Dynasty Xu Shen's "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Words", there is a description of rice dumplings, "粽" characters are originally written as "rice", and the "Shuowen Xinfu Mibu" is called "rice, reed leaves wrapped in rice also." From the meter, the sound of the leaves. This is the earliest record of Zongzi in the literature so far, and the "rice dumpling" in the literature is the prototype of Zongzi similar to today's practice. As a traditional Chinese famous food full of strong national flavor, Zongzi is still deeply loved by people today with the rapid development of the times.

Zongzi is believed to commemorate the food of the Chu poet Qu Yuan during the Warring States period, but this claim is mainly derived from legends and stories, so the academic community has a controversial origin of Zongzi, with different theories, but one thing is agreed, that is, Zongzi was originally a sacrificial object.

Some scholars believe that the origin of Zongzi is related to the horn of the sacrifice, and the shape of the horn is a simulation of the shape of the horn, so there is a description of "killing the horn when killing the peat, there is a description of its horn" in the "Book of Poetry, Zhou Song, Liangyun". During the Western Zhou Dynasty, cattle, as the representative sacrifice of the highest rank "Tai prison", were used to sacrifice the gods of earth and ceres in anticipation of a bumper agricultural harvest.

In the Spring and Autumn period, people began to wrap rice with leaves and make horns to replace cattle used for farming. The leaves of aquatic yin are wrapped in the yin and yang nature, and the combination of yin and yang is the meaning of rice dumplings as sacrificial supplies.

Another theory is that zongzi is a kind of dragon sacrifice, and the Southern Dynasty Liang Wujun's "Records of Continued Qi Harmony" records: "Qu Yuan threw Miluo water on the fifth day of May, and the Chu people mourned, and on this day, they used bamboo tubes to store rice and throw water to sacrifice it."

In The Han Jianwu Middle School, The Changsha District Qu suddenly saw a soldier, Ziyun 'Three Lu Doctors', qu Yue: "Wen Jun should see the sacrifice, very good." Stolen by the dragon for many years, if there is a favor now, it should be stuffed with neem leaves and wrapped in colored silk. These two things are feared by the dragon. Qu yiqi said. This May 5th is made of rice dumplings, with neem leaves, five-flowered filaments, and the legacy is also. "The sacrificial items in the quotation are made of bamboo tubes and rice, and neem leaves are stuffed and wrapped with colored silk, which is similar to today's zongzi in terms of its production method and form, so it is considered to be the origin of zongzi.

There is also a saying that zongzi is the seasonal food of the summer solstice, and the Jingchu Chronicle has a cloud: "The summer solstice festival eats rice dumplings, and the week is called the horned rice dumplings, and the people use Hsinchu as the barrel dumplings." Also known: "Summer solstice festival, eat rice dumplings." In ancient times, the summer solstice festival had the custom of worshipping gods and ancestors, so it can be seen that zongzi is also a kind of food used by people to worship gods and remember ancestors in midsummer. There are many opinions, but this also highlights the diversity of the origins of Zongzi.

The author believes that Zongzi was indeed used for sacrifice in the early days, but during the Two Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the summer solstice festival arose, and people began to transform the horned millet that was originally used for sacrifice, replacing the original poisonous neem leaf with the leaf, making it gradually become a unique food during the summer solstice. Later, because the Dragon Boat Festival gradually became known to the world and was similar in time to the summer solstice, many summer solstice customs were incorporated into the Dragon Boat Festival, so later generations mistakenly attributed the origin of Zongzi to the Dragon Boat Festival, and gave the connotation of commemorating Qu Yuan, which is obviously the result of the dual choice of history and national culture.

02, the type of rice dumplings

In the vast land of China, people in different periods and regions fill different materials into Zongzi through clever collocation, which not only makes the varieties of Zongzi rich and colorful, but also makes China's Zongzi culture diversified and developed.

First, white rice dumplings

White rice dumplings are the simplest of the many types of rice dumplings, and they are also the varieties closest to the original appearance, and their filling is only a single cereal grain. According to historical records, before the Jin Dynasty, China only had this variety of white rice dumplings. In ancient times, the filling of white rice dumplings was mostly millet, and in the north, the rice dumpling method was to wrap the rice with the leaves of the rice, so it was called horned rice; In the south, people fill rice with bamboo tubes, so they are called tube dumplings.

During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the rice dumplings gradually disappeared, and the leaves wrapped in millet developed into banana leaves, lotus leaves, etc., and later mostly used bamboo leaves and reed leaves. At the same time, the filling material of zongzi is also gradually changing, and in the Tang Dynasty, glutinous rice gradually replaced millet, making the taste of zongzi more delicate and soft. At the same time, people make white dumplings into various shapes, with a variety of patterns, and they are very delicate, including Jiuzi Dumplings, Baisuo Dumplings, Yujia Rice Dumplings, Powder Dumplings and so on.

Nine Zi Dumplings are to use colored threads to tie nine Rice Dumplings together, Tang Xuanzong once mentioned in the "Dragon Boat Three Halls Feast Group Courtiers To Explore the Divine Characters and Sequence" that "the four flowers are skillful, and the Nine Zi Dumplings are competing for the first", which shows its popularity.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, people began to pour honey on white rice dumplings to eat, and wu Zimu's "Dream Liang Record" of the Southern Song Dynasty had the description of "wrapped steamed rice dumplings, chestnut dumplings, jin ting wrapped steamed ling dumplings, molasses yunguo qiao dumplings"; In addition, the record of "Molasses Qiao Dumpling" also appears in the third volume of the elaborate "Wulin Past Events" "Dragon Boat Festival", which is called honey dumplings, and the emergence of this production method is directly related to the large-scale cultivation of cane sugar in the Song Dynasty and the development of frosting manufacturing technology.

In the Qing Dynasty, a new variety of white rice dumplings appeared, known as "bamboo leaf rice", that is, made of white glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, which has both the fragrance of bamboo leaves and the elegant rhyme of bamboo. Nowadays, simple white rice dumplings are also very popular, and people refrigerate white rice dumplings into summer afternoon desserts, and in the Beijing area, people also pour rosewood juice, which is particularly unique.

With people's rising demand for health, they began to use buckwheat, oats, japonica rice, etc. instead of glutinous rice or added to glutinous rice to reduce the burden caused by eating glutinous rice on the human body, such white rice dumplings have also become the best choice for people's daily staple foods in some areas.

2. Salty dumplings

Salty rice dumplings are a type of rice dumplings that are salty in taste based on white dumplings, adding fresh ingredients such as meat. Salty dumplings first appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, when people began to mix poultry and animal meat in rice and wrap them into "miscellaneous dumplings" as gifts for gifts, which was the original form of meat dumplings.

In the Song and Yuan dynasties, egg yolk dumplings, pork dumplings, etc. began to appear, which further increased the variety of salty dumplings. In the Qing Dynasty, due to the increasing popularity of eating ham, ham dumplings also appeared.

Yuan Ming, a famous foodie in the Qing Dynasty, also mentioned the practice of ham dumplings, which includes "Hongfu rice dumplings, go to the top of the glutinous rice, check its perfect long white, take half of its scattered crushers, taozhi is extremely ripe, wrap it with a large leaf, and put a large piece of ham in it; Seal the pot and simmer, day and night, the firewood is continuous. The food is creamy and gentle, and the meat is mellow. Or Yun: That is, the description of the use of ham fat is chopped and scattered in the rice", which is enough to see the consumption of ham and rice dumplings in the Qing Dynasty.

In modern times, the variety of salty dumplings began to increase significantly, and the characteristic pillow dumplings in the north added mung beans and bacon to the unique flavor; The salty dumplings in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are mainly meat dumplings, with soy sauce marinated pork as the filling, and each rice dumpling only wraps a piece of fat meat and a piece of lean meat, and there is no other material, the taste is fat but not greasy, fragrant and delicious, of which Jiaxing meat dumplings are the most famous;

In addition, Guangdong salty dumplings are also unique, not only large, the materials are also quite exquisite, the filling has ham, bacon, egg yolk, roast chicken, char siu, roast duck, chestnuts, shiitake mushrooms, shrimp, etc., the taste is delicious, let people taste endlessly.

For example, people in the southwest region use specialty plantains and bamboo tubes to make rice dumplings, and put the flavored glutinous rice or fragrant rice into bamboo tubes, and then add chicken, sausages, etc.; The Dai people are good at making vanilla dumplings, the method is to burn fresh thatch into grass ash, mixed into the soaked glutinous rice, the glutinous rice becomes black, with the aroma of grass, and then add spices and pork marinated, wrapped in reed leaves, after cooking is black vanilla zongzi.

3. Sweet dumplings

The filling material of sweet rice dumplings is very rich, and its ingredients are bean paste, melon seeds, date paste, lotus paste, etc.; There are also edible flowers such as roses and osmanthus flowers; There are also pickled kumquats, plums, dried fruits, etc. The period when sweet rice dumplings first appeared was roughly the same as that of salty dumplings, and people during the Southern and Northern Dynasties began to wrap red dates, chestnuts, and red beans into rice dumplings, adding new flavors to rice dumplings.

In the Song Dynasty, people put the fruit into the rice dumplings, called candied dumplings, su Dongpo has a poem "when you see the bayberry in the rice dumplings". At the same time, people also piled rice dumplings into pavilions, wooden carts, cattle and horses to attract business, and the "West Lake Old Man's Prosperity Record • Dragon Boat Festival" wrote: "Horned dragons, only the capital city in the world will beat rice dumplings into pavilions, pavilions, cars and so on." Shops are sold, more exhortations, each for the sake of craftsmanship. "It is enough to show that eating rice dumplings in the Song Dynasty has become a fashion."

The additions of Rice Dumplings in the Ming Dynasty added bean paste, pine nuts, walnuts, etc., and the categories of sweet rice dumplings tended to be perfect. Nowadays, sweetness is also constantly adjusting to meet people's tastes and needs.

The sweet rice dumplings in the north use rhubarb rice instead of glutinous rice, filled with dates, red beans and preserved fruits, and some add brown sugar and peanuts, which can be eaten after cooling. The sweet dumplings in jiangnan are represented by Suzhou and other places, mainly mixing bean paste, date paste and lard into glutinous rice, and the four-corner dumplings after cooking are exquisite and beautiful, sweet and delicious; Sweet dumplings in Guangdong, Fujian and other places wrap lotus paste, mung bean paste, red bean paste, chestnut paste, date paste, walnuts, etc., and the varieties are dazzling; The southwest region is good at making fruit dumplings with unique flavors, generally diced pineapples into bamboo tubes and cooked together with glutinous rice, the taste is sweet, also known as "pineapple rice", which can be seen as the result of the development and evolution of ancient rice dumplings.

The production methods of sweet rice dumplings in different places are different, which makes the taste of rice dumplings also vary widely, the most representative is the eight treasures of sweet dumplings, which have melon strips, honey cherries, orange cakes, lilies, coix seeds, lotus rice and other ingredients in the dumplings, and the various flavors are integrated but do not conflict, but just right highlight the sweet taste of the rice dumplings, which is enough to reflect the superb craftsmanship of today's sweet dumplings.

03, the culture of zongzi

In the beginning, Zongzi was simply used as a kind of food that people could easily carry when they went out, and later, people gave Zongzi more cultural connotations, and the representative of Zongzi culture was its festive cultural connotation, and the connection between Zongzi and the Dragon Boat Festival was first seen in the "Terroirs" of jin ren Zhou: "Midsummer Dragon Boat Festival, cooking the dragon horn."

In ancient times, "five" passed through "noon", and "end" meant beginning, so the first noon day of the noon moon was called the Dragon Boat Festival. In May, because the yang qi dissipated, the number of insects and ants increased, the epidemic spread, and it was easy to feel uncomfortable, so it was called "evil moon" in the "Jingchu Chronicle", and people associated the production of disease with the evil qi, so they used five-colored silk threads to tie them to the arms to remove the evil spirits.

There is a cloud in Qingfu Cha Dunchong's "Records of the Yanjing Years": "On the Dragon Boat Festival, changing the worms were inserted next to the door to make you ominous, which is also the will of the ancient Ai Hu Pu Sword." Calamus, an herbaceous plant or semi-shrub-like plant, has a strong aroma, can repel mosquitoes, has the effect of dispelling diseases, people in May with wormwood inserted in front of the door to "dispel evil spirits".

In summary, in ancient times, the Dragon Boat Festival's rice dumplings were mostly in the form of sacrifices, which meant to remove the qi. Mr. Wen Yiduo attributed the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival to the worship of the "dragon" totem in the ancient Wuyue region, and he defined the activity of rowing dragon boats as the pursuit of dragons in the article "Dragon Boat Examination", and described the "tube dumplings thrown in the river" as a means of sacrifice, which explains the reason why zongzi is closely integrated with the Dragon Boat Festival.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, people began to formally combine Qu Yuan with the Dragon Boat Festival, Zongzi, and posterity speculated that it was mostly related to its turbulent government, and after the Wuhu Chaohua, Qu Yuan was sought after by displaced Middle-earth people as a symbol of patriotism and justice, so the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month was officially called the festival of tribute to Qu Yuan, which is more logical.

With the change of the times, the festival system of the Dragon Boat Festival has also been continuously improved, and various folk activities such as dragon boat racing, horn eating, ribbon tying, smoked mugwort leaves have also enriched the culture of rice dumplings.

Looking at the process of the development of Zongzi culture, it is not difficult for us to find that perhaps the original Dragon Boat Festival, Qu Yuan, and Zongzi are not directly related, but in the long historical process, people are comprehensively affected by the historical environment, natural environment and living environment, and at the same time add their own thinking to integrate these cultural materials, this heterogeneous confluence method has given birth to such a brilliant festival culture.

In addition, other rice dumpling cultures have gradually emerged over a long period of time. In the Tang Dynasty, in the Dragon Boat Festival, the emperor feasted on the courtiers, Zongzi often appeared in such royal banquets, the Son of Heaven rewarded the nine sons of Zongzi to the courtiers with rich political achievements or favors, in order to show the royal grace, Zongzi represented is a manifestation of status, Zongzi culture began to contain political significance.

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, Zongzi also often appeared in the masterpieces of the literati and inkers, and Ouyang Xiu of the Northern Song Dynasty had "Fisherman's Pride": "The May durian flowers are beautifully baked, the green poplars with rain are hanging heavily, and the five-colored new silk is wrapped around the horns of the dumplings." Gold plate sent, raw silk painting fan plate double phoenix. It is the bath orchid season that moves, the calamus wine is beautiful and clear, and the leaves are yellow and yellow. Yu Zhensong, waiting for idleness to break the screen window dream. ”

In its "Jiannan Poetry Draft", the Southern Song Dynasty Lu You also had the feeling that "Quping Township and the country are five times more important, no more than the perennial horn plate", which shows that Zongzi and poetry culture are closely linked, and can even arouse people's homesickness.

Zongzi has continued to develop in the long history, and both the shape and the production process have been improved. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the horned rice and the barrel rice were still simply wrapped in leaves or placed in bamboo tubes, while the Han Dynasty had begun to soak the rice in grass and wood ash to make alkali dumplings.

During the Wei and Jin dynasties, people learned to add other materials such as medicinal herbs, meat, nuts, etc. to the rice dumplings to enhance the taste of the rice dumplings and use them as gifts. In the Tang Dynasty, glutinous rice was used as the main raw material and wrapped into a cone, and the method of making rice dumplings was basically mature.

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, zongzi was wrapped in place of rice dumplings with leaves and mugwort leaves, breaking the seasonal limitations of eating rice dumplings, and the rice dumplings in the Ming and Qing dynasties improved in taste. Zongzi has been able to circulate in the central plains to this day, not only related to the continuous creation of the wise ancestors, but also related to the cultural connotation of Zongzi itself.

Times are different, the role of Zongzi has been changing, but the strong historical charm it contains and the touching human affection have not changed.