Zongzi for Qu Yuan

This morning I found the bath filled with long shiny bamboo leaves which had been left to soften overnight. In the kitchen stood bowls filled with soaking beans, chestnuts, shrimps and mushrooms. Son H was preparing another Chinese meal. This time the plan was particularly ambitious: to make zongzi, which are traditional streamed dumplings in the form of bamboo leaf parcels stuffed with glutinous rice, Chinese bacon, fried pork belly, and the afore-mentioned ingredients. He decided to give the salted egg yolks a miss.

"The shape of zongzi" we are told "ranges from relatively tetrahedral in northern China to cylindrical in southern China. Wrapping a zongzi neatly is a skill that is passed down through families, as are the recipes. Making zongzi is traditionally a family event in which everyone helps out."
So we all mucked in, following to the best of our ability the detailed
YouTube instructions which make the task appear quite simple, if you are deft and experienced - but we weren't and as you can see our attempts resulted in leafy packages of all shapes and sizes lashed around with both string and the grass stems provided. The process involved much sighing and swearing as the leaves slipped from our grasp, the filling dropped out and the tying-up proved a terrible fiddle. When we finally exhausted the ingredients, and ourselves, the dumplings had to be steamed for two hours, no less. They were excellent but proved so satisfying that we could barely manage more than 3 each and we are left with a large surplus.

The story behind zongzi involves a famous Chinese poet Qu Yuan, a patriot, statesman, ideologist, diplomat and reformer in ancient China during the Warring States period (400-200 BCE). He was ousted by treacherous rivals and sent into exile in Hunnan, where, eventually, distraught by defeat of his state, he committed suicide by drowning himself in the Milou River. Local people were so grieved by his death that they threw packets of rice into the water to distract the fish from eating the poet's body. The custom of making the zongzi dumplings has continued ever since on the anniversay of Qu Yuan's death, May 5th, along with boat races which recall the search for his body. Sad to say, Qu Yuan's home town has itself been drowned by the Yangtse river dam project so you could say he sleeps with the fishes after all. A sample of his poetry is here.