The day started off with hanging the Shi Xiang Fu (stone-joss stick-symbol/mark) on both sides of the main door and then preparing standard "SanSheng" (chicken, pork and eggs/cuttlefish), rice wine, tea and for this festival, the savoury and alkaline dumplings, for the ancestor worship ceremony. I blogged about this last year.
How many of you know what this is?
It is made from bamboo and cut into thin strips up to the node where they are all joined together.
For those of you who are old enough, this is what was used to tie the wrapped dumplings. Beside this, they also used "salted straw" or 咸草 (茳茳咸草 Cyperus malaccensis) 。The bamboo is now rarely available while the "salted straw" or 咸草 can still be bought in the market. Both are 100% GREEN!
Nowadays, for convenience's sake, most people use nylon or cotton strings.
Enjoy your Duan Wu festival.
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