Suichang Long Rice Dumplings 遂昌长粽

Suichang Long Rice Dumplings (遂昌长粽) are the long, slender zongzi of Suichang County (遂昌县) in Lishui (丽水), Zhejiang, made for the Dragon Boat Festival. They are also known as "long-affection zongzi" (长情粽) or "sharing zongzi" (分享粽), and their making technique is on Zhejiang's sixth list of provincial intangible cultural heritage.

How it is made

Unlike ordinary zongzi, a Suichang long zongzi looks like a length of bamboo: dragon's-beard grass (龙须草) is wound upward around the wrapping of bamboo leaves (箬叶), marking it into joints, a shape read locally as a wish to rise step by step. The glutinous rice is first soaked in lye water made by burning Chinese chastetree (牡荆) to ash and filtering water through the ash in a sieve; locals call it "golden firewood ash water" (黄金柴灰水). The rice is then drained before wrapping.

Ingredients

The filling is pork belly from local pigs with meigan cai (霉干菜), a dried preserved mustard green, inside the lye-soaked glutinous rice.

Where it comes from

In 2023 Suichang held a long-zongzi festival at Dragon Boat time in Wangcunkou town (王村口镇) and Longyang township (龙洋乡), with a wrapping contest and a long-zongzi banquet at which more than a hundred villagers sat at a 60-metre table. Villagers also kept up the local custom of floating "dragon rafts" (放龙排): four timber rafts over 40 metres long, carrying zongzi dragons, drifted down the Wuxi River (乌溪江). The county has developed four long-zongzi villages that offer visitors bamboo-leaf picking, zongzi wrapping and tasting.