Duanwu festival, also known as dragon boat festival is a traditional holiday which originates from China. This festival has been long celebrated in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and China. It falls on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Lunar Year. During that day, people celebrate this festival by eating rice dumplings and having dragon boat competitions. Rice dumplings are lumps of rice wrapped in lotus leaves, typically with stuffing inside. Such stuffing can be either savory or sweet and the common ingredients for the stuffing are meat, dry mushroom, beans, salted egg yolk, red bean paste and lotus seed paste etc.
The celebration of this festival by the Chinese is to remember a man called Qu-Yuan in China. He was an official working for the emperor. In one instance, the emperor refused to listen to Qu-Yuan’s advice for an important decision for the empire and Qu-Yuan jumped into the river to drown himself to prove his point. However, the emperor still did not listen and the kingdom fell. The people of the empire were upset by Qu-Yuan’s death as he was a loyal official and they were afraid that the fishes in the river would eat up his body. As such, they made many rice dumplings and threw them into the river, so that the fishes in the river would eat rice dumplings instead of Qu-Yuan’s body. This is the reason why rice dumplings are eaten during every Duanwu festival.

	Rice dumplings