Shefan Festival Rice 社饭

Shefan Festival Rice (社饭) is a steamed dish of glutinous rice mixed with wild spring herbs and cured pork, made by Tujia (土家族) households in Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (恩施土家族苗族自治州), Hubei, for the spring she day (社日). It began as a sacrificial food and is now a spring dish that Tujia families make every year.

How it is made

The Enshi Prefecture government describes the method. Tender artemisia (香蒿) and wild onions are picked in the fields. The artemisia is chopped, put in a cloth bag, pounded and rinsed in clean water to wash out its bitter juice, then dried over heat and crumbled. It is mixed with diced cured pork, diced pressed tofu and garlic shoots into glutinous rice that has been soaked in boiled water, and the whole mixture is steamed in a wooden steamer (甑).

Ingredients

Xinhua calls the early-spring plants that residents gather on the hillsides, such as artemisia, wild onion and shepherd's purse (地米菜), essential ingredients. These are mixed with cured pork and glutinous rice, steamed in a wooden steamer, and the finished rice is fragrant and, in Xinhua's words, full of the taste of spring.

Where it comes from

Shefan Festival Rice is an old sacrificial food of the Han, Tujia, Miao and Dong peoples, offered to the gods of land and grain. It is eaten on the she day, the fifth wu day (戊日) after the start of spring; the local names for the occasion are guoshe (过社) and lanshe (拦社). Wu days are linked with the earth element, so the day is given to worshipping the earth god and praying for a good harvest and a peaceful household. A saying current in Enshi runs: adults look forward to planting, children to the New Year, and after the New Year everyone looks forward to the she day.