Personal Food Writing: Tzung Tzu and the Stories behind It

People call me "Big O", where the "O" stands for not only my initial but also the word "omnivore". Indeed, I am a real food lover. I once flew 2000 miles from Dalian, my home city in northern China, to Guangzhou, a city in southern China that is famous for its local dishes. There I had five main dishes for dinner, and then I flew back home on the very same day. During the past few years, I have tasted a large variety of famous dishes all over the world. However, my favorite food is a quite ordinary traditional Chinese food, the Tzung Tzu.
Tzung Tzu is also called “rice dumpling”. It is a food that Chinese people would traditionally make and eat on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, commonly known as the Dragon Boat Festival. On the day, people put a bowl of sticky rice in the middle of a lotus leaf, wrap it into a tetrahedron, tie it up with cotton rope, boil it for half an hour, and then a traditional Tzung Tzu is well made. Tzung Tzu is traditionally made of sticky rice and lotus leaf, but nowadays, as people are getting too busy to make Tzung Tzu themselves, factory-produced Tzung Tzu with different flavors becomes available in grocery stores; some common ones are meat Tzung Tzu, jujube Tzung Tzu, and fruit Tzung Tzu. Despite the large variety of Tzung Tzu available now, my favorite kind is always the simplest traditional one with sticky rice and lotus leaf, because the stories behind it mean more to me than the food itself.
The origin of Tzung Tzu dates back to 400 B.C. when China was in the Warring States Period. The country split into seven independent kingdoms, one of which is the Kingdom of Chu. At the time, Chu was controlled by a corrupt aristocracy group who forced heavy tax on the people and embezzled the collected money for personal pleasure-seeking. Then, in around 350 B.C., a young man named Quyuan became the chancellor of Chu. A righteous person, Quyuan stood up against the aristocracies and implemented new laws which reduced the tax burden from the people and combated corruption. Quyuan’s efforts brought temporary prosperity to the Kingdom of Chu, but it did not last for long. Feeling threatened, the aristocracies joined up to put pressure on the monarch of Chu, and since the aristocracies’ forces were too strong, the monarch of Chu finally decided to exile Quyuan. On hearing the despair, Quyuan committed suicide plunge on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month in 340 B.C. The people of Chu were both mournful and indignant at Quyuan’s death. Most of them lacked basic food supply, but they each made a full bowl of rice, wrapped it up with the lotus leaf by the river that Quyuan plunged in, and threw it into the river. They believed this way the fish in the river would eat the rice and leave Quyuan’s body untouched. As time passed by, people repeated the same thing on the same day every year. Gradually, this became a tradition, which was passed down for over 2000 years until today, and the rice wrap evolved into Tzung Tzu, my favorite food.
Besides Quyuan’s story, another reason why Tzung Tzu is my favorite food is associated with a personal story of mine. It was when I was in the fifth grade, our school moved from the downtown of the city to a rural area because of fiscal deficit. As the new school year began, the headmaster asked me to speak at the opening ceremony as the student representative. Actually, I had been told what to say days before the ceremony, and all I had to do was to repeat the speech. On the day of the ceremony, however, standing on the platform in front of all the teachers and students of the school, I suddenly felt an obligation to tell my true thoughts. I hesitated for a while, and then, naïve as I was, I asked the headmaster whether she wanted me to tell the truth; maybe back then, I was still too young to realize that my question could only make the situation even worse since everyone would then know there was collusion beforehand. The result was predictable: the headmaster said yes, and so I told the public exactly what I felt about our current situation and how much I missed our previous campus. After the ceremony, the headmaster was rather irritated. She called my mother, told her about the whole story, and asked her to teach me “some basic philosophy of life”. My mother did so, but her lesson was special. She started the lesson with a homemade Tzung Tzu, and as we ate it, she told me the story of Quyuan, the one I just talked about, and she ended the lesson with the words: “After 2000 years, the names of the aristocracies have long been forgotten, but even today, people still make Tzung Tzu and talk about Quyuan. This is because over the long time of history, only the spirit of righteous people remains forever. What you have done today makes mom proud of you.” The storied took place over ten years ago, and so my quotation of my mother’s words may not be accurate, but since I’m such a food lover, one thing I remember for sure is that the Tzung Tzu she made that day was the traditional type. Ever since then, the traditional Tzung Tzu has become my favorite food.
2000 years have changed a lot of things. Tzung Tzu that was homemade 2000 years ago has become mass produced today; Tzung Tzu that was made for Quyuan 2000 years ago has become a food on people’s own table today. Despite these changes, I still keep making traditional Tzung Tzu on my own on the Dragon Boat Festival every year. However, My Tzung Tzu is made neither for Quyuan nor for myself; it is made for all the people in the world who devote themselves to justice, because I am sure that my favorite food is their favorite food as well.