Book of Days Tales

Today is the day of the Qingming Festival in China, also known as Pure Brightness Festival, or Clear Bright Festival, or Ancestors Day or Tomb Sweeping Day. It falls on the 104th day after the winter solstice (or the 15th day from the Spring Equinox), so it is a minimally movable feast in that it can sometimes fall a day earlier or later, but normally it falls on 5 April in the Gregorian calendar. Qingming denotes a time for people to go outside and enjoy the greenery of springtime ( “treading on the greenery”) and tend to the graves of departed ones.  There are also special foods for the day usually tinged green from the juice of fresh wild greens of spring.

The Qingming festival holiday also has significance in the Chinese tea culture since this day divides the fresh green teas by their picking dates. Green teas made from leaves picked before this date are given the prestigious ‘pre-qingming’ designation which commands a much higher price tag. These teas are prized for having much lighter and subtler aromas than those picked after the festival.

Quingming festival food consists of an assortment of dishes and drinks consumed on the Quingming festival. It includes eggs, rice porridge, cakes, and snacks such as Juan Bao Bing (pancake roll) and Po Zi Guo, a dish made of fruits and leaves of Po Zi Guo tree and prepared in a bamboo steamer.

Green Tuanzi is a traditional Chinese dish, which looks much like a dumpling, and has a green color. The green color comes from the juice of a wild plant and the dumpling skins are made from rice flour. Qingming guo is a dish looking like a steamed dumpling, and made of an outer shell of rice, glutinous rice and green wormwood, with a stuffing of beans inside it. Fillings may also include dried bamboo shoots, bacon and mushroom in different regions of China.

Wuren Rice: It is made of glutinous rice and leaves of wuren tree and is an essential part of Quingming festival food.

It is not really possible to give recipes for these dishes because they involve wild plants that are indigenous to Asia only.  However, I did find this one:

Making Wuren rice is not a complex or a difficult task. Here’s the recipe. Clean the Wuren leaves (vaccinium bracteatum) first, boil the leaves and remove them before adding glutinous rice into the prepared Wuren soup. Drain the glutinous rice after immersing for 9 hours and steam the glutinous rice in a bamboo steamer until the rice is cooked thoroughly. The prepared Wuren rice will have a nice and unique smell with a special flavor compared with common cooked glutinous rice.