Zhuang Five-Colour Sticky Rice 壮家五色糯米饭
Zhuang Five-Colour Sticky Rice is featured among the local specialties of Guangxi.
Zhuang Five-Colour Sticky Rice (壮家五色糯米饭) is glutinous rice soaked in plant dyes and steamed in several colours, a festival food of the Zhuang (壮族) people of Guangxi. Zhuang families treat it as a symbol of good fortune and a plentiful harvest.
How it is made
China News Service followed Liang Sizhen (梁丝珍), a maker in Jingxi village (靖西村), Dapu town (大埔镇), Liucheng County (柳城县) in Liuzhou, as she worked through hand-made orders ahead of the Sanyuesan festival (三月三), held on the third day of the third lunar month. She does every stage herself: gathering the plants, making the dyes, soaking the glutinous rice in dyes of different colours and then steaming it. The black dye is made from maple leaves, which she washes and cuts before use. She also works the coloured rice into decorative folk pictures.
Where it comes from
The technique of making Zhuang Five-Colour Sticky Rice has been handed down for more than 1,000 years. Every year, around Sanyuesan or at the Qingming festival, people across Guangxi commonly make it.
Questions before you order
Where does the black colour in Zhuang Five-Colour Sticky Rice come from?
From maple leaves. The maker washes and cuts them to prepare a black dye, and the glutinous rice is soaked in the plant dyes before it is steamed.
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.