By ECLC Staff June 16, 2018
For celebrating the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival, Peking University invited our ECLC students together with other exchange students to a special activity on Friday evening 6/15. Under guidance of a professional cook, the students were taught how to prepare Zongzi 粽子, a traditional dish that every Chinese loves to eat during the Dragon Boat Festival.
In various regions throughout China, people use different kinds of leaves, for example reed, lotus or bamboo, to wrap up a delicious filling made of sticky rice. While different leaves are used throughout China the actual process of forming the leaf into a particular shape to wrap up the filling is the same in all places.
The students were invited to taste different kinds of Zongzi in order to get an idea of the subtle difference in flavoring achieved by different ingredients and leaves. Then they were asked to try prepare this dish by themselves. To motivate every participant to make an honest effort, this was made into a small competition.
During the competition our students quickly learned this traditional handcraft and even came up with some own innovative methods of how to form the leaves. Our student Alex Jakobsen from Aarhus University was particularly successful in mastering this cuisine skill: the Zongzi wrapped up by him became the auditor’s favorite and was granted the first price in the competition. Overall, our ten ECLC students who participated all enjoyed this special activity and said that the evening was a lot of fun.