Longlin Black Sticky Rice Dumplings 隆林黑粽子
Longlin Black Sticky Rice Dumplings is featured among the local specialties of Guangxi.
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Longlin Black Sticky Rice Dumplings (隆林黑粽子), also called hei zongba (黑粽粑), are black zongzi made for Spring Festival in Longlin Various Nationalities Autonomous County (隆林各族自治县), Baise, Guangxi. The Guangxi Administration for Market Regulation describes them as a festival food shared by all of the county's ethnic groups.
Ingredients
The black colour is made in one of two ways: with naturally black glutinous rice, or with ordinary white glutinous rice dyed with the ash of glutinous-rice-straw pith (糯谷心草灰) or of sesame stalks. Either way the filling is cooked chestnut, mung beans or rice beans, and pork, mixed with powdered tsaoko (草果, a black cardamom) and salt. The wrapping leaves are described by the Guangxi market regulation bureau as a Longlin speciality.
How it is made
The China intangible cultural heritage website sets out the wrapping. Two leaves are overlapped and covered with a layer of soaked black rice, then a layer of chestnut, a layer of bean paste and a piece of cured pork, after which the layers are repeated in reverse order. The leaves are folded to enclose the rice completely and the dumpling is tied with rice straw; makers wrap them in whatever size they like. The dumplings are put in a pot with water to cover and boiled for about seven hours.
How it is eaten
The dumplings can be eaten as soon as they are cooked; the Guangxi market regulation bureau calls them fragrant and tender. The heritage website adds that a cooked black dumpling tastes even better fried or roasted, and that pan-fried in oil until both sides are golden it becomes crisp.
In Longlin, households start wrapping on the 28th or 29th day of the twelfth lunar month, just before Spring Festival, and each family makes several tens of jin. The dumplings are eaten over the festival, laid out as offerings to ancestors and given to relatives and friends.
Where it comes from
A legend recounted by the Guangxi market regulation bureau sets the origin in the ancient kingdom of Yelang (夜郎), where a physician is said to have cured a ruler's loss of appetite with a leaf-wrapped mixture of tsaoko, chestnut, mung beans, pepper, black glutinous rice, sesame-stalk ash and pork. In 2000 the dumplings won a 'Famous Guangxi Snack' gold award in a tourist-food judging at the Guangxi International Folk Song Arts Festival. In 2006 they were a designated refreshment for guests at the third China-ASEAN Expo, and in 2020 the Longlin black rice dumpling making technique (隆林黑米粽制作技艺) entered the eighth batch of Guangxi's regional intangible cultural heritage list.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.