A Starbucks employee serves zongzi, glutinous rice dumplings, at an outlet in Shanghai on Monday, May25, 2009.(Sopurce: China Daily)

    BEIJING, June 1 -- Did you eat "zongzi", a traditional Chinese snack, during this year's Duanwu Festival which fell on the May 28th?

    I didn't. When zongzi became a kind of instant food, it lost its appeal to me.

    Despite the vast array of new flavors of 'zongzi' available today, like expensive abalone and sea cucumber stuffed into them in replacement of the traditional pork stuffing, I' m sorry to say, compared with what zongzi was in my memory, it has become something tasteless today.

    Due to rapid economic growth, the snack of glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves that we used to eat only once a year during the Duanwu Festival, also known as Dragon Boat Festival, can now be bought at any supermarket, anytime of the year. We don't have to wait 12 months to eat another zongzi.

    This year, even US-based coffee chain Starbucks joined the team of zongzi providers, not to mention those traditional zongzi sellers including local restaurants and retail giants like Wal-mart and Hualian. All of them compete fiercely for larger market shares.

    Faced with a barrage of zongzi and intense promotions, consumers are bored.

    The food which once required a few days of preparation now requires no more than 10 minutes for reheating.

    Five or six years ago, most Chinese families made zongzi themselves at home. Mothers bought bamboo leaves, glutinous rice, pork or jujubes as ingredients of zongzi. Before wrapping, they had to soak rice and leaves in water overnight, which is the secret to making successful zongzi. After zongzi were tied up into pyramid-shaped dumplings, they would be boiled in water for two or three hours.

    Making zongzi is in fact not an easy job, because it requires much time. However, people nowadays, particularly people living in cities, just want to skip all of that and rely on supermarkets to supply their yearly zongzi. For this reason, their children never had a chance to experience the anticipation of waiting to eat zongzi. They don't need to eagerly ask mums hundreds of times "Is zongzi done yet?"

    When people enjoy the convenience of modern cooking and food preservation technology, they lose both the joy of waiting for something special and the unique flavor of homemade zongzi.

    When consumers are tired of those standardized food products including quick-frozen zongzi offered by supermarkets or chain restaurants, they start their long journey looking for something different. Knowing this change will help us better understand why restaurants dubbed "si-fang-cai", literally private home cuisine are so popular in China's big cities.

    It's ironic that so many people abandon food DIY traditions just for the sake of convenience and then spend instead large amounts of money and time looking for restaurant substitutes of homemade dishes.

    In my opinion, the best way to get the taste back in zongzi is to make zongzi with your family members at home. Adding affection and patience into every zongzi with your own hands will make it an unforgettable memory for the whole family.

    Maybe next year I should return to my hometown on Duanwu Festival to make zongzi with my mum. That was what I can recall in my childhood days when I longed for the holiday marked by eating zongzi.

    -- by Xu Leiying

    (Source: CRIENGLISH. com)