Miluo Sticky Rice Dumplings 汨罗粽子
Miluo Sticky Rice Dumplings is featured among the local specialties of Hunan.
Miluo Sticky Rice Dumplings (汨罗粽子) are the zongzi of Miluo (汨罗), a county-level city in Yueyang (岳阳) on the edge of Dongting Lake (洞庭湖): glutinous rice wrapped in ruo (indocalamus) leaves (箬叶) and tied into the shape of an ox horn. Since 8 October 2019 the name has been a national geographical-indication product protected by the China National Intellectual Property Administration.
Ingredients
The geographical-indication rules require local ingredients: groundwater from the production area, ruo leaves grown there and used within two days of picking, and that year's local Guihua glutinous rice (桂花糯), known locally as 'three grains to the inch' (三粒寸). Food-grade alkali goes into every kind. There are three standard types: plain, with rice and alkali at 100 to 1; meat, adding fresh or cured pork at 30 parts to 100 of rice; and bean, adding red or green beans in the same proportion.
How it is made
The rice is soaked for 45 minutes and drained for 30, mixed with the alkali and filling, wrapped in the leaves and bound with coloured thread. The dumplings are boiled at 95 to 100°C under about 10 cm of water for 150 minutes, then left in the pot with the heat off for another 60 minutes. Miluo cooks have also long made other kinds, and the city lists versions wrapped in bamboo leaves, rice soaked with mugwort leaves or in mint water, and fillings of red-bean paste, lotus seeds, pine nuts or ham.
Flavour and texture
Unwrapped, a Miluo zongzi is orange-yellow and glossy, almost translucent. The rice is soft and slightly sticky, with a fragrant, sweetish taste.
Where it comes from
Miluo is where the poet Qu Yuan (屈原) drowned himself in the Miluo River (汨罗江) on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 278 BC. Local tradition says that fishermen's and farmers' wives pressed cooked rice with a little salt into balls and threw them into the river so the fish would leave his body alone, and that these rice balls later became the ox-horn zongzi. The Miluo city annals record that during the Jianwu reign of the Eastern Han (25 to 56 AD) people switched to throwing zongzi of millet (黍米) wrapped in ruo leaves into the river on the anniversary.
The Dragon Boat Festival customs along the Miluo River, in which zongzi making is central, entered China's first national intangible cultural heritage list in 2006, and in 2013 Miluo listed zongzi making on its own as a municipal heritage item.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Reference photo of a similar dish · 同类菜品参考照片A similar preparation is pictured; the local version may differ. 同类菜品参考照片，当地做法可能不同。Photo: Stevenliuyi · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
