Feature: Malaysian Chinese youngsters wrap up glutinous rice to celebrate Duanwu Festival

With several basins on the dining table, Law Pai Yeow, a teacher of Malaysia's New Era College, was wrapping up glutinous rice with reed leaves with her six students side by side.

As a traditional Chinese food eaten during the Duanwu Festival (Dragon Boat Festival) which fall on June 20, Saturday, this year, Zongzi, or rice dumpling, is made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo, reed, or other large flat leaves.

Although nowadays it is not quite common for people in China to make Zongzi at home anymore, as a Malaysian Chinese, Law hopes to take this as an opportunity to cherish the Chinese traditional culture with her students.

Among Malaysia's over 28 million-population, there are around 7 million Chinese ethnics, who also celebrate the Chinese traditional festivals as what people do in China. At this Duanwu festival, Law chose to teach her students how to wrap up Zongzi.

Similar to the process of making Zongzi in Southern China, Law and her students add various ingredients into the glutinous rice, such as meat, mushroom, salty duck egg yolk, cow gram, dried shrimps and so on. After boiled in the water, the taste of these ingredients will be melt perfectly with the aroma of the reed leaves, which will definitely work up one's appetite.

The New Era College, where Law works, is a Malaysian Chinese community-funded tertiary institution. Law is a teacher of the School of Media and Creative Arts. She said that her family has begun to make and eat Zongzi on the Duanzu festivals ever since her childhood, and she really enjoys this feeling.

"Nowadays fewer and fewer people wrap up Zongzi by themselves, however, family members will still get together to eat Zongzi on the Duanwu Festival," Law said, adding that this tradition has never changed.

Talking about the reason why she chose to teach the students how to make Zongzi, Law said that it was her students who mentioned about wrapping up the food with her. In a bid to encourage the students to inherit the Chinese culture, Law decided to put it into action despite the complex preparation for ingredients.

Under Law's detailed instructions, the students grasped the essentials of making Zongzi fast. In less than two hours, they turned all the ingredients in the big basins into delicious food. Looking at their masterpieces, all of the students laughed with heartfelt happiness.

Actually, there was a secret for the reason why these students wanted to learn how to make Zongzi. "Except for celebrating the Duanwu Festival, we wrap up the Zongzi to express our gratitude to the senior people in the community for their long-time support and concern to us," Chong Kah Yee, one of the students, said, adding that they will give all the Zongzi to the senior people as festival gifts.

These words moved Law, who said that the traditional virtues are more important than the traditional festivals in the Chinese culture.

"By learning how to make Zongzi, the students merged the two elements very well, which I believe will give them benefits for their whole life," she added. Endi