Yangtze Delta region — Jiangnan tradition; national festival
Qingming (tomb-sweeping) Festival in early April involves food offerings to ancestors and specific traditional foods: qingming kueh (青团 — green glutinous rice balls) coloured with mugwort or wheat grass juice, spring rolls (the original spring festival food of this date), and cold food (han shi — cold food festival, once observed the day before Qingming). The green rice balls have a bitter-herbal flavour from the mugwort.
Grassy-herbal, slightly bitter mugwort against sweet bean or savoury pork filling; the glutinous texture is characteristically chewy; a spring seasonal flavour
{"Green rice balls (qing tuan): glutinous rice flour mixed with fresh mugwort (ai cao) or barley grass juice; filled with sweet red bean or savory pork floss filling","Mugwort should be blanched and squeezed to extract maximum green colour before adding to dough","Han shi (cold food) festival tradition: all food prepared in advance and served cold — ancestor of Chinese cold dish tradition","Spring rolls traditionally eaten at spring equinox — thin pastry, fresh vegetable filling"}
{"Mugwort (ai cao) season is March–April in China — the fresh herb is seasonal; freeze-dried or frozen is acceptable substitute","Savory pork floss and salted egg yolk filling is the modern Shanghai innovation — deeply popular","The green colour should be vivid and natural — fades to yellow-green as it sits, a sign of real mugwort use"}
{"Using food colouring instead of real mugwort — loses the distinctive herbal, slightly bitter flavour","Over-boiling glutinous rice balls — they split if water temperature is too high","Commercial vs. handmade: industrial qing tuan often lacks the real mugwort character"}
Land of Fish and Rice — Fuchsia Dunlop; Chinese festival food tradition