Special Foods for Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat Festival or Duanwu Festival took root in ancient China over 2000 years ago, and now reminds people of a number of folk traditions and myths. Perhaps the best part of all traditions is the Dragon Boat Festival foods, as it is not only delicious and somewhat legendary but also considered as the regimen food especially for this season - the 5th lunar month in Chinese calendar, which is also named the Bad Month for poisonous insects and snakes begin to infest, and the hot weather is likely to bring various diseases. 

Zongzi

Zongzi surely first comes to mind when most Chinese think of the Dragon Boat Festival. The festival's traditional snack is made of glutinous rice wrapped by bamboo or reed leaves usually in the shape of ox horns. Glutinous rice is rich in minerals and vitamins. Zongzi can be more nutritious when added with meat, dates, peanuts, salted duck eggs and other ingredients. With lotus seeds or Vigna radiata, Zongzi is tasty and a remedy for fatigue in summer day. 

Read more on how to make Zongzi

(Zongzi)

Salted duck eggs 

The salted duck eggs have a soft briny smell, a very liquid egg white and a firm-textured, orange-red round yolk that looks like the crab cream. Tradition has it that it is good to eat salted duck eggs during the Dragon Boat Festival as the burning summer is coming. The salted duck eggs are nutrient-rich and has some effect on the treatment of heat stroke.

(Salted duck eggs)

Realgar wine

People in ancient China drank realgar wine at the Dragon Boat Festival for the protection from diseases and tend off evil. In nowadays it is not longer for people to drink realgar wine (realgar wine is highly toxic when being heated, therefore, consult the experts before drink it), but take it as an external medicine to cure wound caused by mosquito bites. 

(Realgar wine)

Moreover, Gansu people eat Mianshanzi made of wheat flour on the Dragon Boat Festival date, while people in Henan Province and Zhejiang Province eat egg with garlic, people in Wuhan city eat eel, and people in Nanchang city eat eggs steamed with tea. 

(eel)