1) Traditional Chinese Food
There are lots of Traditional festivals in Chinese community that can be recognize in the traditional Chinese food on that particular day. Usually, many of Chinese foods are intended to respect or celebrate either the gods or divine persons in past history. Among the Chinese traditional foods, there are three traditional Chinese foods that using leaves for the packaging which are include Zongzi, Nian Goa and Lotus Rice. Further explanation will be brief as below:
a) Zongzi
Most of Chinese were enjoy the Zongzi during Duan Wu or Dragon Boat festival. This festival is to celebrate the honour Qu Yuan (340-278 BC.), the pioneer poet of ancient China. The story begins when Qu Yuan stature caused the jealousy of the king, and expelled him to a faraway area. The local people keep searching him in the river and at the same time they dropping the dumpling into the river to keep the fishes from attacking Qu Yuan’s body. Since that time, it had been routine for local folk to enjoy the Zongzi dumpling.
Zongzi it is food that made up from glutinous rice dumpling or sometime known as traditional Chinese dumpling and wrapped in the bamboo or reed leaves. The filling sometime can be red bean paste or dates. Next, the most essential ingredient in making Zongzi it is the packaging or the wrapping, which is from that packaging it makes a different from other types of Chinese dumplings.
Usually, the leaves that use to packing the Zongzi are bamboo or reed leaves. In scientific term reed leaves known as Phragmites australis (Granholm and Chester, 2012). This plants range is from 6 to 15 feet in height and its flat green colour. The local folk Chinese use this plant because there were abundant of this plant in their area.
In 2005, according to Roy, Lundy and Kalicki, the authors found reed leaves were rich with garlic acid can contribute to the reduction of risk factors for cardiovascular