Recipe for Making Zhongzi (粽⼦子) by Susan Man

The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th month of the lunar calendar at the beginning of the summer season. The festival commemorates the
death of the exiled patriot and poet Qu Yuan who lived in ancient China in third century BC. During the two-day holiday, the more athletic celebrants take part in dragon-boat races which reenact the frantic efforts of fishermen who raced to try to save the beloved poet from drowning. The more literary celebrants recite the poems of Qu Yuan to keep his spirit alive. And ALL of us take part in making and eating zhongzi (粽⼦子), bundles of sticky rice that the fishermen threw into the water to divert demons and fish from Qu Yuan’s body when it became obvious that he had died.
Although, zhongzi is a national dish in China, there are many regional variations on how to make them. There are savory or sweet ones; there are big and small ones; there are simple ones with a few ingredients and there are those stuffed to the gills with all sorts of delicacies. The Cantonese style is savory, big, and filled with everything you’ve ever loved in the Chinese cuisine! You may have guessed that the types sold in stores as “Cantonese Zhongzi” bears little resemblance to what you make yourself.
The best time to make zhongzi is, of course, during the Dragon Boat Festival. The ingredients are easily available and on sale! The key to success is organization and preparation. I usually make zhongzi sixty or more at a time (using a 10 pound bag of sticky rice). I feed them to my family until they resist, give them away to my friends, and freeze them later use. They freeze particularly well, and each zhongzi is good for a meal, especially nice when paired with a salad.
Ingredients
• Bamboo leaves
• String (to tie the zhongzi)
• Sticky rice, also known as glutinous rice (soaked at least 2 hours)
• Mung beans, hulled and split (soaked with the sticky rice)
• Peanuts (soaked at least 2 hours)
• Dried black-eyed peas (soaked at least 2 hours)
• Boneless pork butt (sliced and marinaded at least 4 hours in soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, and garlic powder)
• Chinese sausages (cut into small pieces about ½ inch)
• Chinese mushrooms (sliced and marinaded at least 4 hours in soy sauce, sugar, rice wine)
• Dried shrimp (soaked at least 2 hours)
• Dried scallops (soaked at least 2 hours)
• Salted duck eggs (optional)
Preparation
1. Prepare the bamboo leaves carefully. Choose leaves that are flexible, large, and will not split.
2. Clean the sticky rice, rinsing until the water no longer is cloudy. Add salt (about 1 teaspoon per pound of rice) and soak at least 4 hours.
3. Add mung beans that have been rinsed.
4. Lay out all ingredients along with the bamboo leaves and string.
5. Wrap the zhongzi carefully taking care the rice will not leak out during cooking. Add prepared ingredients as desired. Many videos are available on YouTube showing how to wrap the zhongzi. My method works well for the larger Cantonese zhongzi.
6. Boil in slightly salted water for approximately three hours.
Tips
• The best tip in successful zhongzi making is to properly prepare the bamboo leaves. They impart a distinctive flavor to the zhongzi and soft, flexible, and sufficiently large bamboo leaves will making making zhongzi a snap! I boil them at least 15 minutes to clean and soften them and leave them soaking until ready to use. They should be warm during the wrapping.
• Have a code to determine the type of ingredients inside by the string. My code is to use a loop for the salted duck egg, two short strings for vegan (no meat), and a long and short string for carnivores.
• Boil zhongzi separately for those who are vegan, vegetarian, or have allergies
(such as a peanut or seafood allergies).
• As my vegan granddaughter is staying with me this summer, I am especially taken by how healthy this dish can be with a mixture of rice, beans, peanuts, and mushrooms. Mung beans in particular are especially healthy as they are a type of soy bean. I cook the vegan zhongzi separately.
• Be particularly aware of those with peanut allergies. I cook those zhongzi with peanuts separately.
• The basic marinade I use is ¼ cup soy sauce, ¼ cup sugar, and 1 Tablespoon rice wine. It can be adjusted according to use.
• I use an electric pressure called an Instant Pot that shortens the cooking time to 30 minutes. This is a wonderful appliance that I use constantly in my kitchen for soups, stews, braising tough cuts of meats.
• When reheating zhongzi you can boil it in water (slightly salted) or steam it. I get slightly less good outcome by using the microwave oven.

Dragon Boat Festival Celebration

Although we didn't have a dragon boat race for our festival celebration, we still had a great time with 40 friends at Board member Teresa O'Neil's house in Santa Clara.

 Board Member Susan Man made over 50 Cantonese style zhongzi for the party, adding marinated pork, Chinese black mushroom, dried shrimp, split mong beans, and salty egg yolk. She laughed, “It has so many wonderful ingredients, everything except the kitchen sink!”

We not only enjoyed the zhongzi she prepared, but she--and sous chef Kenny Lin-- taught those interested how to make and wrap them.

In addition to the festival food, zhongzi, people also brought seasonal Chinese fruits, like lychee 荔枝, and dragon eye nuts 龙眼，pineapples, and cherries… Chinese minfen 米粉，and a whole lot more...

Aside from eating lots of delicious food, Winny Lin, co-chair of our chapter, retold the story of Qu Yuan 屈原, the patriotic poet of the Warring States. She enlisted several guests in the re-enactment of the story. Yanshuo Zhang, Phd candidate of Stanford Eastern Studies, recited and explained excerpts of Li Shao 離騷, the famous poem that the father of Chinese poetry, Qu Yuan, wrote before he threw himself into the Mi Lo River汩羅江! Tina Man also brought fragrant sachets, 香包, as prizes.
“You know how to make us laugh, how to feed our stomachs and how to warm our hearts!” said Shawa, one of our guests.
That's our definition of a good party.
Stay tuned for details about our next event in September.

May 16-June 8 Special Art Exhibit : Relics From A Disaster

This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the China's great disasters: the Cultural Revolution. Some 1.5 million people were killed during the revolution, and millions of others suffered imprisonment, torture, and seizure of property. The nations schools were closed, China's culture and art destroyed, social resources wasted. Mao's ten-year program devastated the country. 

Art Curator Shu Jianhui has put together an exhibit of surviving art pieces. They will be on display in his gallery for the next two weeks. Stop by. 

Where: Silicon Valley Asian Art Center, 3777 Stevens Creek Blvd, 4th Floor

When: May 16-June 8, Wed-Fri: 11:00-4:30, Sat/Sun: 11:00-6:00, 

**Don't miss a special lecture on May 30 from 2-5. 

China in the News

Be sure to read these fascinating articles on China:

KFC in China Now Uses Robots, and the BBC article on China's Science Revolution.

China Turns Pro-Entrepreneurship: A World of Start-ups

Robinhood is an American start-up company that uses technology to allow anyone to buy and sell stocks on a cell phone or iPhone, with no broker fee, with intent to democratize the market. DJI of China is the world market leader in easy-to-fly drones and aerial photography systems. What do the two have in common?

Innovation and technology.
In mid April, our speaker Jason Tu spoke to us about business innovation, technology, and financing startups in China. Jason has a long acquaintance with the USCPFA, dating from school in Evansville, Indiana, then Purdue, then France. He worked in Hong Kong in a British bank, then in Shenzhen in Financial Technology. Now he's an MBA student at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Recently he led a group of Stanford business students to visit new media and technology companies in China.
Jason told us about three key features of the recent technology startup trend in China.
1) China has moved from reverse engineering copycat to global innovation. Example: the Drone Market, where DJI accounts for 70% of the global commercial drone market share. Drones controlthemselves using deep learning, a kind of artificial intelligence. The Chinese use the drones to inspect railroad tracks, to inspect high-voltage power lines, and in agriculture to spray pesticides and fertilizers. Jason talked about how early drone technology evolved from ban open source code from Carnegie Mellon and how the Chinese further developed that to world standards.
2) China is bypassing some technology to focus on the future. Example: while still unable to manufacture good gasoline engines, China puts a lot of focus and investment into electric vehicle development and in other high-tech areas such as robotics. In 2015, China produced 33,000 electric cars, and has intent to produce 5 million by 2020.
3) Numbers and population really matter. Example: e-commerce. Wei Xin (WeChat), a smartphone app, reaches 700 million users—including me. Like the iPhone, one can do free calls, video, text, and even get a taxi and pay utility bills on the ap. One can find others on WeChat in ones area and connect with them. Consumer technology companies have gone far beyond their counterparts in the US, with many new business models flourishing in China. But the real engine behind the fast-developing consumer technology is its large population whose members constantly have a thirst for new things.

Where does the money come from?
From both public and private sources. There are a great number of venture capitalists nowadays in China, whose money is primarily from high net worth individuals and companies that made their money from traditional sectors such as manufacturing, real estate, and large tech companies. Some private companies, such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, put money into private financing as well.
Public sector money depends on the city, each of which has its startup incentive schemes rolled out by the government. Some venture capital firms and private equity firms have government backing as well.
Jason talked about Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing. Of the three, Shenzhen will match private money that exceeds 1 million Renminbi. Beijing has a very large startup community. While Shanghai has its Free Trade Zone, it has the most rules and regulations, seemingly never-ending ones that keep changing.
With the current economic slowdown, there is great concern that the traditional big companies won’t provide enough jobs to new graduates. Sixteen million Chinese enter the labor market every year. Hence the Chinese government is now very pro-entrepreneurship—encouraging the private sector to expand.

By Jason Tu and John Marienthal

Walk of Remembrance May 14