Dragon Boat Festival, Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival are the three most significant and popular Chinese festivities. Legend has it that the Dragon Boat Festival is to commemorate the patriotic poet Chiu Yuan. The Festival is well known for its customs of eating rice dumplings and dragon boat races. Since the Festival falls in the summer when many diseases start to spread, people hang sweet flag and Artemisia on their doors, adults drink wine, and children wear sachets to steer the ¡§evils¡¨ away so as to protect themselves. These customs have been passed on over the ages. In some places, people still abide by the custom of fetching some water from a well at noon on Dragon Boat Day for their family members to drink. This is believed to have some curing effects.

As China covers a large area with abundant resources, the rice dumplings from the different regions vary in styles and tastes; for example the salty-sweet rice dumplings of Swatow, the gigantic rice dumplings of Zhongshan, the shiny-fresh rice dumplings of Kuangsu-Zhejiang, the sweet bean paste rice dumplings of the North, the appetizing Hong Kong-style meat-filled rice dumplings with XO sauce, and the aromatic mushroom and pork-filled rice dumplings of Taiwan. In recent years, different places have come up with a wide variety of rice dumplings to cater to the healthy life-style of today's people. These include the dainty looking and refreshing mini vegetarian rice dumplings seasoned with vegetarian oyster sauce; and the mini five-grain red date rice dumplings filled with soft, munchy, low-calorie, fiber-rich, healthy white glutinous rice, barley, black glutinous rice, red beans, millet, oats and red dates pre-soaked in rock sugar syrup.

The Chinese custom of eating rice dumplings has gradually spread to neighbouring countries such as Japan, Vietnam and Korea. Vietnamese like to eat rice dumplings which come in round and square shapes, wrapped in banana leaves. The round ones represent "heaven" while the square ones stand for the "earth"; and the harmony of "heaven and earth" brings fortune and prosperity. They believe that eating rice dumplings on Dragon Boat Festival will bring good weather and a plentiful harvest. The Japanese fill their dumplings with ground white rice instead of glutinous rice. Their rice dumplings are elongated in shape and seasoned with rich sauces, but the wrapping leaves lack that special, lingering fragrance.