Qingtuan [青團(tuán)]

Qingtuan [青團(tuán)]

Qingtuan is a kind of green sticky rice dumpling which is named after its color and shape. It is a special food for Qingming Festival, which falls around April 5 on the Gregorian calendar. This custom could be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago when ordinary people were forbidden by law to cook on a certain day. So they made rice dough two days in advance. Qingtuan is made of rice and barnyard grass shoots stuffed with red bean paste.

Crab-Yellow Pastry [蟹殼黃]

Crab-Yellow Pastry [蟹殼黃]

This round yellow pastry looks like the shell of a cooked crab, hence its name. The main raw material for this snack is oil-mixed dough. The dough is split into small pieces, stuffed and squashed to form a flat round cake. It is then wrapped with a layer of sesame and finally baked in an oven. The Crab-Yellow Pastry usually has a salty or sweet flavor. The salty pastries are stuffed with shallot oil, pork, crab or shrimp; the sweet ones with sugar, roses, sweetened bean paste or Chinese date paste.