Stir Pairing: Dragon Boat Festival edition
With arts, culture, and food, there’s more to the Duan Wu Festival than paddling
A.BENTO.
Bellingham Wines.
Desireé Dawson.
Every week, Stir Pairing suggests locally available food and drink to go with a local arts event.
The event
Dragon Boat Festival, or Duan Wu Festival, June 3; Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival, June 24 to 26
The food
A.BENTO’s zhongzi, bamboo-wrapped sticky-rice dumplings
The drink
Boschendal Wine Farm’s Chenin Blanc 2021; Bellingham Wines’ Bernard Series Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2019
The lowdown
Chances are the mention of Dragon Boat Festival conjures images of paddlers plying the waters of False Creek. And indeed, the Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival is back this year, taking place June 24 to 26. In addition to brightly coloured boats racing to steady drum beats, the largest fest of its kind in North America—formally known as the Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival, founded in 1986—also features a Chinese Cultural Pavilion, Indigenous Cultural Pavilion, and live music. Among the numerous acts taking to the 102.7 THE PEAK Main Stage are Sound of the City–featured artists Hotel Mira, Dacey, Tonye Aganabe, and Desiree Dawson.
The origins of the annual event are rooted in Chinese history dating back centuries. Also known as Duan Wu Festival or Duanwu Jie—meaning “the beginning of mid-summer festival”—Dragon Boat Festival honours a legendary and beloved court official and poet named Qu Yuan. A celebration of summertime, the fest involves much more than its namesake vessel, with arts, culture, and food being central.
The backstory: About 2,000 years ago, during China’s Warring States period, Qu Yuan leaped into the Miluo River in protest upon learning that the Kingdom had fallen to the Qin army. Local villagers tried unsuccessfully to save him, racing to him in their boats, splashing water and pounding their drums to distract fish and water dragons from getting to him; they also tossed rice wrapped in silk to lure the creatures away from him. Over time, the rice became eventually wrapped in bamboo leaves.
Dragon Boat Festival is also known as Duan Wu Festival, meaning Double Fifth Festival, since it occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar.
This year, Duan Wu Festival is on June 3. China will have three days of public holidays to celebrate, from June 3 to 5. The fest is also marked in many other Asian nations, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Taiwan. (Sometimes, the dates of the Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival, typically at the same time each year, happen to align with those of the Duan Wu Festival itself.)
Among the rites associated with the holiday is hanging wormwood and calamus to fend off evils and keep people healthy. Then there is one of the holiday’s most important traditions, the making and eating of zhongzi, bamboo-wrapped sticky-rice dumplings.
A.BENTO
William Chen (far right) with his son and mother.
The food
Aaron Zhou and William Chen are co-owners of A.BENTO, a Taiwanese eatery at 656 West Broadway where they put their own West Coast spin on the food they grew up with. The two consider Duan Wu Festival to be a sacred time for extended family members, often of multiple generations, to connect and share traditions.
“As a child, I used to look forward to Duan Wu Festival because that was when we would go visit Grandma,” Zhou says in a release. “Grandma always welcomed us with her signature sticky rice wraps – which she would have spent days making – for us to enjoy together as a family. And in case she didn’t make enough, which was never the case, she would show me how to assemble them and we would spend hours chatting and making more for me to bring home.”
Making the sticky rice wraps from scratch is a days-long process. Each ingredient needs to be prepared individually before assembly: the dry shiitake mushrooms are soaked in water overnight then strained; the strained juice from the mushrooms is used to soak the raw, sticky rice; the pork belly is braised with a special sauce; the sticky rice is cooked and mixed with the braised pork jus; and the salted egg yolk is baked in Shaoxing wine. Finally all of the items are combined and wrapped in dried bamboo leaves.
A.BENTO executive chef William Chen has, with the help of his mom and son, been busy for weeks making two versions of sticky-rice wraps for this year’s Dragon Boat Festival for people to enjoy at home. One is the traditional braised pork belly, both Chen and Zhou’s personal childhood favourite, and a vegetarian option with shiitake mushroom and san bei sauce, (rice wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil), a Taiwanese classic.
“With my mom’s help, we are truly honoured to pass on the tradition and hope our coming generations will do the same,” Chen says.
Available for order via their website until June 5, the sticky-rice wraps come in bundles of six for $25 and as part of the Dragon Boat Festival Gift Box starting at $48.99.
The pairing
Traditionally, people would drink xionhuang (or realgar) wine, which the ancient Chinese believed to be a tonic that would ward off evil spirits as well as illness. It’s made of cereals and dosed with realgar, a yellow-orange arsenic-sulphide substance. Yes, arsenic. There’s only a minute amount of the toxic material in the wine, but it remains a highly controversial drink to this day. In case it’s not clear, this is not our recommendation.
Chef Chen loves pairing sticky-rice wraps with a bright pineapple oolong tea.
Refreshing flavours can also be found in another start-of-summer celebration: #DrinkCheninDay on June 17. Chenin Blanc is the most widely planted grape in South Africa, with several exceptional examples of the country’s varietal available in Vancouver.
Boschendal Wine Farm—a WWF Conservation Champion located on the Western Cape—makes a food-focused series called Sommelier Selection. The fruit sourced for its Chenin Blanc 2021 ($21.45) come from cool coastal sites, the grapes hand-picked in the early-morning hours to retain their complexity. The wine has green-apple and melon flavours that lead into layers of citrus and mineral notes, finishing off crisp and clean. Boschendal white-wine winemaker Danielle Coetsee says that the younger the wine, the better it will suit fresh salads and grilled seafood; as it matures and the spicy and honeyed notes start to develop, it pairs beautifully with Asian cuisine.
Another option: Bellingham Wines’ Bernard Series Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2019 ($26.99). The hand-picked fruit comes from old-bush vines specifically blended from Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Darling. A luminescent gold wine, it has concentrated tropical flavours of peach, pineapple, and honeysuckle, perfect to go with sticky-rice wraps and to toast summer.
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