Zongzi

Zongzi predates the Qu Yuan legend — in its earliest form, called jiaoshu, it was a summer-solstice offering. The first clear written record is in Zhou Chu's Fengtu Ji (Western Jin, c. 3rd century CE), which describes wrapping millet in wild-rice leaves and boiling it in lye into a horn shape. The Dragon Boat Festival association first appears in Wu Jun's 6th-century anomaly tale Xu Qi Xie Ji, roughly 300 years after Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Miluo River (278 BCE); the rice was wrapped in chinaberry leaves and tied with five-colored thread to keep river dragons from eating it. By the Tang dynasty (7th century) zongzi was already a fifth-month-fifth-day ritual food.

Glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves, tied with cotton string, and boiled for hours. The Qu Yuan/Duanwu origin is a Han-dynasty graft onto an older summer rice-package custom; the leaf is half the flavor.

A four-cornered pyramid of glutinous rice steamed inside two folded bamboo leaves, tied with kitchen twine. Untie, peel back the leaves — the rice has gone jade-green and smells of bamboo. Inside: a hunk of fatty pork belly, salted egg yolk crumbling orange, sometimes a chestnut. The rice is sticky, savory, lightly oily; the leaf perfume is the whole point.

Bamboo leaf is non-negotiable — the chlorophyll and grassy aromatics infuse the rice during the 2-3 hour steam, and no foil or paper substitute reproduces it. The southern (Cantonese, Jiangnan) style uses savory pork-and-yolk fillings; the northern style is sweet, often plain or with red bean and dipped in sugar. The fold matters: a leaky tie loses water, the rice goes mushy on one side and dry on the other.