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The traditional food for the Dragon Boat Festival, Zong zi is a glutinous rice ball, with a filling, wrapped in corn leaves. The fillings can be egg, beans, dates, fruits, sweet potato, walnuts, mushrooms, meat, or a combination of them. They are generally steamed.

Yuanxiao and Tangyuan are balls of glutinous rice, sometimes rolled around a filling of sesame, peanuts, vegetable, or meat.

The round shape symbolizes wholeness and unity.

Ingredients

4 1/2 cups (500 g) sticky rice flour

butter 7 oz (200 g)

black sesame powder 7 oz (200 g)

sugar 8 oz (250 g)

1 tsp wine

Methods

1. Mix the butter with sesame powder, sugar and wine together. You need to heat it a little bit. Make small balls about 0.3-0.4 oz (10 g) each.

2. Take 1/2 cup of sticky rice flour. Add water to the flour and flatten the dough. Cook it in boiling water and take out when done. Let it cool. Then put it in the rest of the sticky rice flour. Add water and knead until the dough is smooth.

3. Make the dough into small pieces about 0.3-0.4 oz (10 g) each. Make it into a ball using your hands and then make a hole in the ball like a snail. Put the sesame ball into it and close it up.

4. Cook them in boiling water. Keep stirring in one direction while cooking. When they float, continue to boil for about one minute using less heat.

Here are the top 8 auspicious food symbols for Chinese New Year. These delicious dishes are served during the reunion dinner on Chinese New Year's eve with family members.

Hot pot

A steaming hot pot with meat, seafood and vegetables is a must. Huo in hot pot (huo guo) 火锅 is the same word as huo in (hong huo) 红火 "prosperous and booming".

Fish

Another must-have dish if you want to experience abundance in the new year. Fish yu 鱼 is the most popular dish served during Chinese New Year. In Chinese, fish has the same sound as "surplus" and "abundance" 余. A whole fish is served on Chinese New Year's eve for the reunion dinner.

Shrimp

Shrimp (xia) 虾 in Mandarin and (ha) in Cantonese sounds like someone laughing. Eat shrimp for happiness and well-being.

Boiled dumplings

A Chinese New Year tradition is eating boiled dumplings. These are shaped like gold ingots. Dumplings jiao zi 饺子 sounds like (jiao zi) 交子which means the hour of transition into the New Year. Hence, in northern China, dumplings filled with meat are eaten on Chinese New Year's eve to usher in good luck and wealth in the New Year.

Oyster

Hao sounds like (hao shi) 好事 which means "good things". In southern China, it is served with thin rice noodles.

Green vegetables

For close family ties, serve some greens.

Qing cai 青菜 sounds like (qing) 亲 as in (qin re) 亲热 meaning "close/intimate."

Niangao

Nian means year and cake gao sounds the same as high gao 高. So eating this steamed cake made of rice flour and topped with red dates has the meaning of attaining* greater prosperity and rank in the new year.

Noodles

Known as (chang shou mian) 长寿面 meaning "longevity noodles". A wish for good fortune ---- Good Luck, Prosperity, Longevity, Happiness and Abundance ---- is central to the Chinese way of life.

Some of the things to cook with for Chinese are the same as in the West. Others are quite different. However, most Chinese dishes can be prepared and cooked with the equipment found in the normal home kitchen with perhaps, a few smallish additions. A good supply of pots and pans of various sizes should be handy. In general, slow cooking dishes should have thicker pots and faster cooking things should have thinner ones. In the recipes, skillet means any shallow, thin pan which oil can be heated quickly for various forms of frying. Deep frying, of course calls for something deep enough in which to float the pieces to be deep fried.

For the handling of materials being cooked, you can use the ordinary ladle, leaking ladles, and perforated frying shovels.

Of course, you will want to add your home kitchen with Chinese cooking utensils such as a wok and bamboo steamers as you go along and get more ambitious; which you''ll find very useful and indispensable once you put you hands on them. This section is created to make you have a better understanding of the utensils used in a typical Chinese kitchen and help you decide if you want to invest in some.

 Bamboo steamers are great for steaming food and are designed to fit inside the wok. The texture of the bamboo allows steam to circulate and evaporate so that less moisture will form on the inside of the lid. The bamboo steamer has the additional asset of allowing more than one layer of food to be steamed simultaneously - just stack a second basket on top of the first. Chinese would boil water in a wok then stack bamboo steamers over the wok, up to 5 layers, with the food needing less steaming on top, and the most, at the bottom. Bamboo steamers are attractive and can be used to serve food as well. They sure will fascinate yours guests!

Tip: To clean a bamboo steamer, simply rinse it with water. Do not use detergent or it will absorb the flavor of the soap and spoil the taste of you food the next time you use it.

The Chinese Spatula : This is a long-handled wide shovel-like blade spatula specially designed for stir-frying in the wok, known as ''wok sang'' by the Chinese. The edge of the spatula blade is rounded to fit the shape of the wok, and the utensil itself is sturdier overall than the usual Western version, to allow stirring and tossing of large quantities of food as well as removing food from the wok.

The Chinese Wire Strainer - This wide, flat wire-mesh strainer with a long bamboo handle is very useful for removing deep-fried foods from hot oil or noodles from boiling water. It drains oil and liquid more efficiently than those metal perforated types. The long bamboo handle won''t conduct heat and helps keep you farther away from the cooking heat. The most common size for home use is 6" diameter.

Sizzling Platter - Sizzling-platter dishes, also called "iron-plate" dishes, have recently become popular menu items in Chinese restaurants. These dishes are named for the heavy iron platter that is used for serving. The platter is heated to a high temperature, placed on its wooden tray, and delivered to the table. When hot stir-fried food is spooned onto the platter, the sizzle is very dramatic.
Clay -Pot - Clay-pot dishes are the Chinese version of the American casserole. The main difference is that they are cooked on top of the stove rather than in the oven. The design of the clay-pot assures good retention of heat, so that even if dinner is delayed, the food stays piping hot. Clay-pots add an indefinable richness of flavor to soups and hot pots.

Steaming stand or rack - useful in steaming food.

Long Wooden Chopsticks: The Chinese sometimes use chopsticks for putting food into and taking thin gs out of a wok especially during deep frying, but you may use your fingers, forks or ladles, if you have not learned to use chopsticks.

C hopping block - The Chinese prefer a wooden chopping block over the plastic ones because it does not slip as easily and a big heavy wooden block big enough to hold what you''re chopping is easier to find. However, you can always lay a damp kitchen towel under a plastic board to prevent slipping. Never soak a wooden chopping block. Instead, scrub with soap and hot water after us and keep dry when not in use. Occasionally, you can use vinegar and lemon juice to clean, sanitize and deodorize a chopping board.

China produces over 35 percent of the world's supply of rice and is the largest producer of rice in the world. Rice is a grain that is the staple food for most Chinese in the central and southern China and Taiwan. The harvest of rice is thought to have begun around 8000 to 10,000 BC. In the late 1970's Chinese archaeologists discovered rice remains in the Zhejiang Province dating back some 5000 years. The Chinese prefer short-grained, slightly sticky rice. Also popular is a short-grained glutinous rice known as "sticky rice". Sticky rice has a sweet flavor and is a main ingredient in fillings, deserts, and is used to create some alcoholic beverages. Cooked glutinous rice is often served wrapped in bamboo leaves and is popular during Chinese festival.

Rice Cultivation
For thousands of years rice has been cultivated in the hot and humid climate areas of China. Most Chinese rice is grown in flooded fields (paddies). For many rice growers in China, cultivating rice is a labor-intensive process with two to three harvests per year. The cultivation process begins with rice seedlings being grown in protected conditions. The seedlings are then planted one-by-one into paddies. At harvest time the paddies are drained and the rice plant is removed from the fields. The rice plants are then dried and the rice removed from its husk. The entire cultivation process can take as little as 40 days.

Rice Preparation
There are three common ways the Chinese prepare rice; for breakfast and/or a late night snack the rice is cooked in a large amount of water for several hours and combined and/or consumed with salted eggs, pork, beef, chicken or fish. The second method is it to make a thicker rice soup by boiling the rice with less water. The third method and most popular worldwide is to boil the rice in a covered pot so once cooked it is fluffy enough to eat with chopsticks. In the past rice was cooked various times a day as needed. Today rice can be cooked once a day and kept warm all day in automatic electric rice cooker.

Other Uses
In China rice is not only consumed by people but also used as feed for animals. Over the centuries the Chinese have used rice plants to make paper, flour for breads and noodles, wines, vinegar, and sticky glutinous rice was even used to create a mortar used during construction of the Great Wall and other stone and brick buildings in China.