May 28 was the Tuen Ng Festival here in Hong Kong, which is a public holiday. There are two main traditions for this festival: (1) cooking rice dumplings (2) having "dragon boat" races where teams race each other across various harbors around Hong Kong. One of those locations was our very own Discovery Bay so we decided to grab lunch at our favorite place on the waterfront (Mexican - where else?) and join in the festivities. I also participated in the holiday festivities by making rice dumplings with the kids at school the day before but I couldn't try one because they are filled with shrimp.
The story behind this festival and the reason for these traditions is that Chu Yuan was a beloved politician (those two words don't usually go together do they?) who drowned himself in the river to protest the emperor. The people loved him so much that they jumped in boats to try to search for him and save him. When they couldn't do that, they started banging on drums and dumped rice dumplings into the river to keep the fishes from eating his body. Good stuff.
2 comments:
"Good stuff" doesn't even begin to describe how good this stuff is!
it's like snapple...it's the best stuff on earth
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