Happy Holidays 6: Dragon Boat Festival and Zongzi

Hello, Tim!

I am back with my usual unassigned letter of the week!

However, I would have to keep this one short as usual, for today (which is Monday, since we are on holiday because of the Dragon Boat Festival) I have quite a tight schedule. There a thing or two I want to talk about, but I would have to finish it within an hour.

Let’s get started!

Contents of the Week

- Zongzi: Food for the Festival and the Exams
- Reading my Second and Third Novel Written in Chinese This Year
- End

Zongzi: Food for the Festival and the Exams

As you know, today is the day of the Dragon Boat Festival; we have the dragon boat rowing contest, some other traditions, but the star of the festival to me is the traditional food zongzi.

Sticky rice and several other ingredients mixed together and wrapped into a long-shaped leaf, zongzi is known for its tastiness of the rice and the subtle scent of the leaf after it is steamed.

In my past sixteen Dragon Boat Festival, I don’t think any of them was celebrated without the appearance of zongzi. I would have some of them which were made by my relatives, but this time is quite different.

Maybe you have heard about Qu Yuan, the loyal advisor/poet of the Chinese emperor, and his story. He plunged into the river to prove and pledge his loyalty to his emperor. People threw zongzi into the river to feed the fish so that they wouldn’t eat up the body of the poet. But this was not the only elements to show that zongzi has a connection to our tradition.

It has long been believed that making zongzi represent a better score in tests, which means you can attend better schools, since the act of ‘wrapping the rice in the leaf’ (包粽) has a similar sound to ‘包中’, which means more or less like ‘guaranteed chance of passing (the test)’. So this is what we did!

Yesterday, I went to my cousin’s, and since my cousin and I and two of her friends are all going to apply for college next year, we all had to make some of the tasty but weirdly superstitious food. Fascinating. I never am good at handicrafts, much less foods that involve some handicraft.

Preparation done by the adults; that is usually the hardest step.

My bunch of zongzi. It looks better in pictures. Trust me.

It took us a lot of time, to hold the leaf in the right position, sticking the rice and other ingredients like dried shrimp, peanuts, meat, mushrooms, boiled salty egg yolks, etc. into it (the leaf). I kept ending up breaking or tearing up the leaves a little, but I had fun and it was such an extraordinary experience.

Life with variety; Just the way I like it.

Reading my Second and Third Novel Written in Chinese This Year

A month or two ago, I read a novel that wove some poems from the Tang Dynasty, and the author, 陳郁如, recently released the fourth sequel to her first series of novels, 修練， that had a large chunk of Chinese mythology inside.

Uh oh.

I normally don’t have any problems with too many sequels, but this one worried me, for the previous book of this series was out SEVEN years ago! With that time, one’s writing style may alter drastically, and normally, sequels like this don’t sound promising.

As I feared, the mention of Chinese mythology was all gone, replaced by all the characters and all their backstories that hold no connections to the mythology itself. It was very easy to read, for there were no parts that would make you want to stop reading and think, and that made it more like an action movie rather than a normal novel; you quickly read through it, not being able to put it down, but after you finish the book, you won’t feel as impressed.

The plots were not eccentric nor any other negative adjectives, but I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I did with the previous three. If you ask me, I would say it would be better off without this sequel.

The cliffhanger at the end of the book confirmed the FIFTH sequel to come and being disappointed as ever, I will keep on following the progress of the story.

My next book was one translated from Japanese into Chinese.

I have no idea how to type in the Japanese characters, but I can certainly type in the title of the Chinese translation, 在咖啡冷掉之前 (literally meaning ‘Before the Coffee Goes Cold’). It is a book written by Toshigazu Kawaguchi(川口俊和), a debut novel of the author that has been widely praised since publication. I have yet finished the book, and it would have to wait until the test is over, so this is all for now.

End

This makes a quick conclusion to the letter. We have our finals this Thursday and Friday (with my physics and geography pathetic as usual), and after the finals, we would set off for our graduation trip (yay)

I will keep you updated about us, Tim.

Sincerely,

Hugo