Making New Traditions Out of Old Ones

Make the joong. Make it a party!

Have You Eaten Yet? For more recipes, you can pre-order my next cookbook, Chinese Enough, or purchase Mooncakes and Milk Bread for all things Chinese Baking!

Happy Dragon Boat Festival! Dragon Boat Festival is one of my favorite times of the year because it means I get to eat joong for breakfast all week. Over the weekend, I celebrated by inviting a few girlfriends over for a joong wrapping party. Normally, I make joong on my own with the comforting sounds of Grey’s Anatomy playing in the background, but it’s a lot more fun to wrap with friends. We spent the afternoon wrapping, snacking, and laughing in my kitchen. It was so much fun and I can’t wait to do this again next year!

If you’re a paid subscriber, would anyone be interested in a virtual joong wrapping session later this month?

For those of you who are new to joong and Dragon Boat Festival, joong are bundles of sticky rice that are wrapped and cooked in bamboo leaves. They can be sweet or savory but I grew up enjoying mostly savory ones studded with pork, salted egg yolks, and peanuts artfully wrapped by my pau pau (maternal grandma). There’s a little bit of dark lore behind the Dragon Boat Festival too, which you can read about here. Present day Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated with dragon boat races and joong wrapping!

Up until a few years ago, the only person in my family that knew how to make joong was my pau pau. A few years prior, I had asked her to show me how to make joong and she tried her best to teach me. But my hands never felt like they were folding the leaves correctly and no matter how many times I tried my joong just didn’t looked as good as hers. After my first lesson, I felt discouraged and not feeling very motivated to give joong making another shot.

My pau pau has been a sturdy, unwavering pillar and the keeper of traditions in my family. But I started to think about what happens after? In reality, there will be a time when my pau pau is no longer around to make a hundred perfect joong for Dragon Boat Festival, piles of fried hom chi for Lunar New Year, and platters of white pizza (bai tong gao) for my whole family. That thought alone was enough motivation for me to seriously learn these traditional recipes and customs so that a part of her, my grandparents, and family before me are never forgotten.

Traditional recipes like joong often feel intimidating. So much so that you might rather not even give them a try because you’re afraid of messing up or not being good enough. I’m here to tell you that is not a good enough reason to not try! Every year your hands will find the leaves, folds, and tucks more and more natural. Every year you’ll feel a little closer and more understanding of your grandma. Every year this once intimating tradition will feel less like a relic of the past and more like a cherished part of your life moving forward.

Make the joong. Make it a party! Keeping traditions doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have to keep doing things exactly the way they have always been done. Celebrate traditions in a way that feels most authentically like you. For me, that means having a joong wrapping party with a grazing table of cheese and charcuterie and everyone brings an Instant Pot so the joong only have to cook for an hour instead of 5 to 7. If you think about it, joong wrapping was always intended to be a community event, where women get together for a few hours and make great food for the people they care about… so we’re just getting closer to our roots.

Last year was the first year that my pau pau took a break from joong making, which I think made her a little sad. I had my cousin fly home to Cleveland with some joong I had made and froze to bring back to her to enjoy (which felt like an ironic reversal because I always flew back to SF from Cleveland with frozen joong in my backpack). I think the joong made her happier, but knowing that there was someone else in our family to keep this small part of our culture going meant more than worlds could express.

I have a thorough recipe and guide to making savory joong just like my pau pau’s in Chinese Enough (you can pre-order!) if you’re looking to keep this tradition going as well!