For thousands of years, zongzi has been one of the favorite traditional foods for people in Yizhou district of Hechi.

Zongzi is made of sticky rice and various kinds of fillings, including pork, peanuts, mung beans, Chinese chestnuts, lotus nuts, ginkgo, sweet dates, dried duck, and shredded chicken. People of the Yao and Zhuang ethnic groups in Yizhou also like to add rice beans in the sticky rice.

Wrapped in bamboo leaves, zongzi in Yizhou can be made into different shapes: three-cornered, four-cornered, cylindric, pyramid-shaped, and pillow-shaped. Its weight varies from 1 liang (50 grams) to 5-6 jin (1 jin is equal to 500 g).

Eating zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival is a long-lasting tradition for Chinese people. For Zhuang people in Yizhou, the cone-shaped zongzi is used to offer sacrifices for Huapo, a goddess of the Zhuang ethnic group, on the third day of the third lunar month to pray for children.

In Yizhou, maternal grandparents should prepare 100 zongzi and 100 red dyed boiled eggs for their one month old babies, implying good wishes of the babies living to a ripe old age and achieving good grades.

Zongzi is one of the favorite traditional foods for people in Yizhou district, Hechi. [Photo/yzdzw.gov.cn]