Dragon Boat Festival and Its Connection to Machang

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On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, a festival known as the Dragon Boat Festival (note it's not Dragon Ball). There are three stories of the festival's origin. The story goes with China's first known famous poet known as Qu Yuan which is the most well-known story. This would be the origin of the food that I would know as machang among Chinese Filipinos as well as Filipinos of other ethnicities. Filipinos of Malaysian or Indonesian descent still call it machang. 

The life of Qu Yuan came to a sad end when he ended his life at 62 years old:

During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of enduring poems showing his love and passion for his country, some of which are still very famous in China.

In 278 BC, the Qin State conquered the capital of Chu. On hearing of the defeat, on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, Qu Yuan in great despair committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River (a branch of Yangtze River) as a gesture of dying along with his motherland.

The rest is legend… When they heard of Qu Yuan's death, the local people were very sad, and rowed out on the river to search for his body, but were unable to find him. To preserve his body, the locals paddled their boats up and down the river, hitting the water with their paddles and beating drums to scare evil spirits away. They threw lumps of rice into the river to feed the fish, so that they would not eat Qu Yuan's body.

An old Chinese doctor poured realgar wine into the river to poison the monsters and to protect Qu Yuan. 

Whether or not people did what the legend said, I can't be sure. What was certain was that Qu Yuan ended his life when the Qin State conquered the capital of Chu. Therefore, eating machang became part of a tradition due to the legend. I believe his body was never found. Some people die and their body was never found, therefore confirming their deaths even without a body found.

The ma in machang is the Hokkien for meat. The Mandarin is referred to as 肉粽 (ròuzòng). The 肉 is meat and the 粽 is dumpling. In short, 肉粽 (ròuzòng) means meat dumplings. It has the usage of humba--a dish that tends to evolve and adapt in different places. So far, I've eaten the Filipino version of machang which has a similar taste to valenciana. The difference is that unlike valenciana, machang is steamed in dried leaves such as banana leaves (most commonly used in the Philippines) while others use lotus leaves, bamboo leaves, and pandan leaves. I think the Filipino style of machang uses banana leaves since it's the most readily available material.

Machang has become a readily available street food. For Filipinos, I guess they prefer the brown rice version because it's very similar to the valenciana. There are also versions mixes red beans. I guess my favorite version of the machang will always be the brown version with meat. 

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