photo credit: Graham Racher
Tuen Ng Festival is also known as dragon boat festival or rice dumpling festival. It usually falls within the first two weeks of June, and it is the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar.
During the Warring States period, a Confucian scholar committed suicide by jumping into the river as he was accused of treason. As the local people were afraid of fish eating his body, they started throwing rice balls into the river to feed them. They also paddle out with their boats to chase the fishes away and to retrieve his body. To commemorate this aspiring scholar, people started the dragon boat race and eating wrapped dumplings on this day.
There are a few versions of dumplings and are differentiated by the different dialect groups of the Chinese. In Hong Kong, almost every woman will learn how to wrap rice dumplings. Its main ingredients are glutinous rice, marinated belly pork, chinese mushrooms, dried chestnuts, beans and salted duck egg yolk. It is also commonly sold in the local coffee houses known as the cha chan tang.
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