New Yorkers celebrate Dragon Boat Festival with fervor & color

Hand-wrapping rice dumplings, splashing dragon boats, reciting ancient romantic poems...many New Yorkers marked the Dragon Boat Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday that commemorates the death of an ancient patriotic poet Qu Yuan, with fervor and color over the weekend.

Titillating taste buds

Jasmine, a famed Chinese restaurant in downtown Manhattan, turned itself into a workshop for learning hand-wrapping the rice dumplings on Saturday and Sunday, for people from across the New York City, home to by far the biggest Chinese-American population of any city proper in the US.

It was the restaurant's second consecutive year to host such event. Located near the United Nations headquarters, it caters to diners from all nationalities by presenting authentic Sichuan, Cantonese as wells as fusion cuisine.

The rice dumpling, called Zongzi in Chinese, is a centerpiece of the Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu Festival, which falls on the 5th day of the fifth lunar month (June 18 this year).