The tragedy behind the dumpling festival

It is my family's tradition to offer rice dumplings for worship to the house deities in the morning of the fifth day of the Chinese Fifth Month. This particular day is known to us in the Penang Baba Nyonya community as Gor Guek Chek or Fifth Month Festival. Most households will either prepare or buy meat-based bak chang for worship but not my family. All offerings at our altars are strictly of vegetarian glutinous rice dumplings that are consumed later with a syrup made from gula melaka. Of course, this does not mean that we do not eat the meat bak chang. On the contrary, we have friends and relatives that drop by to present some to us. Otherwise, the rice dumplings are easily available from the markets. 

Nowadays, the Chinese community celebrate the festival with much gaiety but behind all the fun of eating the rice dumplings and watching the dragon boat races - I don't believe there are any organised nowadays primarily because of the pandemic - lies a tragic story of suicide and one man's stand against corruption.

This book, A Cycle of Chinese Festivities, has been in my collection since the 1980s. In it is an interesting account of the dark history behind Gor Guek Chek: how the rice dumplings and dragon boats became associated with the festival. 

What I have below is largely reproduced from the book with some of my personal embellishments thrown in. It is now out of print. The author, CS Wong, was the Acting Senior Chinese Affairs Officer in the Penang colonial government until Malaya's Independence in 1957. He was an expert on Chinese customs and his son, Wong Lin Ken, an Old Free and the winner of a Queen's Scholarship in 1954, gained prominence as Singapore's first ambassador to the United States (1967-1968) and their Minister for Home Affairs (1970-1972). 

The story of the rice dumplings is generally ascribed to Ch'u Yuan (屈原) (c. 278 BC) who is honoured annually on the Fifth Moon Festival, sometimes also called the Patriotic Poet's Festival. Ch'u Yuan was a loyal minister of the State of Ch'u (楚國) and was a Court favourite until his replacement by a rival through Court intrigues. He was banished. When General Pai Ch'i (白起) of the Ts'in State (秦國) launched a second attack on the Capital of Ch'u in the Spring of 278 BC, Ch'u Yuan knew all hope to save the state was lost.

Smitten with grief, he wrote two famous Odes, Ai Ying (哀郢) and then the Huai Sha (懷沙), the latter disclosing his suicide design. Then with sallow cheeks and dishevelled hair, he went to the shore of the Mi-Lo river (汨羅江) - an affluent of the Tung-T'ing Lake (洞庭湖) in Hunan (湖南) - with the intention of ending his life. A fisherman who met him said, "Are you not the Minister? Why should you seek a watery grave?" To which Ch'u Yuan replied, "The whole country is corrupt, except me. The people are inebriated, except me. So it's better that way." "But in that case wouldn't it be better for you to move with the trend and rise in power?" Ch'u Yuan replied that he preferred a death of honour and to be interred in the bellies of the fishes of the river. So saying, he clasped a huge stone with both hands and jumped into the Mi-Lo and drowned himself. 

Traditional history adds that as soon as he jumped into the water, the fishermen instantly rowed out in their boats to try to save him, but in vain. This was later followed by the throwing of rice into the river for the spirit of the heroic minister. This incident happened on the fifth day of the Fifth Moon and annually the people rowed out in boats and scattered rice into the water. 

In about 40 BC, according to a legend, a man who called himself a minister appeared on the shores and told the fishermen that it was a good thing that they did homage to Ch'u Yuan, but as the rice was eaten up by the dragon of the river, future offerings should be inserted into bamboo stems. The end of the stems should be closed up with lien leaves and tied up with five-coloured threads. These lien leaves and five-coloured threads were dreaded by the dragon monster and the food would remain intact for Ch'u Yuan's spirit to consume. 

It is generally believed that the triangular dumplings were thrown into the river not long after this complaint against the river dragon. However, CS Wong mentioned that a Chinese source said that historically the triangular dumplings were first used in the Tsin Dynasty (晉朝) (265-419 AD) in celebration of the turning point of the year at the Summer Solstice by the peasantry. 

In North China, millet was cultivated extensively and the first harvest of millet took place in the Fifth Moon, the Summer month. So these dumplings were originally made of millet, with tortoise meat as the chief ingredient., wrapped with bamboo leaves in triangular shape. The underlying theory was to conform to the Yin and the Yang principles which have an important bearing on the seasons. The tortoise meat within represented the Yin and the bamboo leaves outside represented the Yang. 

It was about the Tsin period that the now-famous dragon boat races first took place. A 20th Century account throws light on the dragon boats in Amoy (廈門), Foochow (福州) and Canton (廣州), where "the water festival is particularly brilliant, and the races sometimes last several days." 

Everywhere there is the bustle of thickly-thronged life, a kaleidoscope of colour and sound, of lights and shadows, of moving boats and people, an ever-changing grouping on land and water in the tawny sunshine with its fierce, prowling splendour... They are a fine sight, these huge boats resembling dragons, each over 90 feet long and so gracefully slim that two men are crowded as they sit side by side. High sterns with long steering paddles rise many feet above the gunwales, high prows are shaped like a dragon's head with open mouth and cruel fangs, and the long body between is gaily painted to represent scales, and touched with with brilliant gilding. On man stands in each bow, as if looking for the corpse of Ch'u Yuan, and throws his arms about as though casting rice upon the waters. Others, interspersed among the rowers, wave brilliant flags or beat gongs and cymbals, so that the deafening clamour may frighten away the monster that Ch'u Yuan feared.

I can also relate here that during my time working at Ban Hin Lee Bank, the bank was very supportive of the Penang government's efforts to promote the annual Penang international water regatta. A mainstay of this annual event were the dragon boat races. Every year from 1983 till 1999, the bank consistently sponsored a dragon boat for the competitions. I remember it was in 1983 or 1984, I accompanied the then Executive Director of the bank, the late Jimmy Yeap Leong Aun, to present the sponsorship monies to the organisers at Gurney Drive. In return for the sponsorship, one of the dragon boats would be adorned with the name and logo of the bank. For several years too, the bank staff would send their own teams to row in the competitions although to the best of my memory not once did the bank's team ever win any race. But to compete and complete was the bank's contribution to make the water regatta a success. I do not know whether this sponsorship continued after Ban Hin Lee Bank was taken over by Southern Bank in 2000.