Zongzi (Rice Dumplings)

30-Second Overview

Taiwan's zongzi has no standard answer. Northern Taiwan steams them; Southern Taiwan boils them. Bamboo-sheath-wrapped and wild-ginger-leaf-wrapped are entirely different philosophies. The vegetarian zongzi that Tainan people eat for breakfast and the cinavu (奇那富) of Paiwan ritual ceremonies are both called "wrapped rice," but they share almost nothing in common. Every Dragon Boat Festival, the "North vs. South Zongzi War" is a fixture of Taiwan's internet — the fight is not about which is better, but about the version each person's mother or grandmother used to make.¹

One Festival, Four Memories

In Taiwan, Dragon Boat Festival zongzi has never meant only "commemorating Qu Yuan."

Taiwan is an island of migrants, and zongzi is a migrant index. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Hoklo and eastern Cantonese migrants brought their hometown zongzi; after 1949, mainlanders who retreated to Taiwan with the government from Hunan, Zhejiang, and Guangdong brought still another set of completely different recipes. Before all of this, the Paiwan, Rukai, and Puyuma peoples of the mountains already had their own leaf-wrapped foods — not called zongzi, and unconnected to Dragon Boat Festival, belonging to a different, far older tradition.²

The zongzi you buy in Taiwan today stands on at least four different ethnic memories.

The Great Battle: What Are We Actually Fighting About?

Every May, Taiwan's most intense online debate is not politics — it's zongzi.

The core difference can be summed up in one rule: South boils, North steams.

The Northern zongzi method: long-grain glutinous rice and fillings are first stir-fried until half-cooked — the concept is "stuffing an oil rice dish into bamboo leaves and steaming." The finished product has individual grains distinct and chewy, with the dry fragrance of bamboo leaves. Traditional wrapping uses bamboo shoot sheaths (桂竹筍殼) — light brown and slightly dry, abundant in the mountains of northern Taiwan.³

The Southern zongzi method is the opposite: raw round glutinous rice and fillings are wrapped together and put directly into boiling water to cook through. Because it soaks in the water, the rice absorbs the broth and the flavor of the bamboo leaves, resulting in a soft, moist, slightly sticky texture. The leaves used are long bamboo leaves, wrapped into a triangle.⁴

Neither method is right or wrong — it only depends on "which mother you had."

According to interviews, the preference difference between Northern and Southern zongzi mainly reflects "local identity," not ethnic background.⁵

Tainan's Vegetarian Zongzi: The Simplest Kind

If you go to Tainan, one breakfast option is the vegetarian zongzi (菜粽, cài zòng).

No meat — just glutinous rice and peanuts, wrapped in wild ginger leaves (月桃葉, Alpinia zerumbet), boiled, dipped in soy paste, and sprinkled with peanut powder. The filling is extremely simple, but it is precisely that simplicity that draws people back: the faint clean fragrance that wild ginger leaves release during cooking is something bamboo leaves and bamboo sheaths simply cannot provide. Tainan people call this "cài zòng" — sometimes also "peanut zongzi" — and vegetarians can eat it too.

Minghe Vegetarian Zongzi (明和菜粽) in Zhongxi District, Tainan, opens for business every morning at 5:30 AM and sells out and closes in less than two hours — nicknamed "the sold-out vegetarian zongzi." Caizongzi Li (菜粽李), founded in 1946 and passed down through three generations, still uses pure white glutinous rice and peanuts, wrapped in four layers of wild ginger leaves by the original method.⁶

No rare delicacies, no salted egg yolk and dried scallop. But in Tainan, this is what Dragon Boat Festival morning is supposed to be.

Mainlander Zongzi: The Shape of Nostalgia

Before 1949, probably very few people in Taiwan had ever heard of "Huzhou zongzi" (湖州粽子).

That year, the large contingent of military and civilian personnel who retreated with the government to Taiwan brought the flavors of Jiangnan into Taiwan's military dependents' villages (眷村). Huzhou zongzi is a four-cornered long rectangle, larger than regular zongzi, with pork belly and salted egg yolk wrapped into glutinous rice, flavored with soy sauce and white wine, with a sweet-savory Jiangnan profile. Cantonese zongzi is even more lavish: barbecued pork, salted egg yolk, dried shrimp, lotus seeds, sometimes with chestnuts.⁷

These zongzi were passed down generation by generation within the military villages. What began as attempts to recreate hometown flavors gradually became part of Taiwan's culinary landscape. Today, many shops in Taiwan operating under the name "Huzhou zongzi" or "Cantonese zongzi" are often run by second- or third-generation mainlanders, wrapping the memories their grandparents couldn't bring as luggage — but could bring as food.

Indigenous Leaf-Wrapped Foods: Unrelated to Dragon Boat Festival

The Paiwan people's cinavu (奇那富), the Rukai and Puyuma peoples' abai (阿拜), look like zongzi on the outside — but they have nothing to do with Dragon Boat Festival.

Traditionally, cinavu and abai appear at ceremonies, festivals, and family gatherings, representing reverence for heaven, earth, and gratitude to ancestors. The method: on wild ginger leaves, first lay a layer of false daisy leaves (假酸漿葉, Nicandra physalodes), place millet (or glutinous rice) and pork, wrap into a rectangle, and steam-cook. The thin false daisy leaves stick lightly to the rice, so after unwrapping the wild ginger leaf, you eat the inner leaves together — rich in fiber, said to aid digestion; the indigenous people say this is the wisdom of the ancestors.⁸

The Amis version is called alifongfong (阿里鳳鳳), colloquially known as "lover's zongzi" (情人粽) — not because it's eaten on Valentine's Day, but because this is the "bento of love" that wives wrapped for husbands heading out to hunt. Four pandanus leaves are woven into a bag after their thorns are removed, filled with glutinous rice and salt-cured pork, sealed — a food pack you can carry on your back.⁹

The Taitung Agricultural Research and Extension Station has even held a "National A Bai Cuisine Competition" (全國A Bai風味餐競賽), inviting cooks from each village to bring their own village's treasured flavors to compete, called by some "the martial arts tournament of the abai world."¹⁰

How Many Zongzi Does Taiwan Sell Every Dragon Boat Festival?

The Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Corporation (北農, Taipei Produce) is the market bellwether for Dragon Boat Festival zongzi every year.

On April 28, 2025, before Dragon Boat Festival had even arrived, Taipei Produce's Dragon Boat Festival zongzi sales had already exceeded 190,000 pieces, breaking the 2024 record of 165,000, with a target of 210,000 and an estimated 30% year-over-year growth rate. Taipei Produce also partnered with a live-streaming event that day, selling 14,000 pieces in under an hour with 550,000 viewers.¹¹

Another angle: the discussion volume of "zongzi" on social media reached 223,000 posts during the 2023 Dragon Boat Festival season, then fell to 165,000 in 2025; researchers point to one reason being the emergence of innovative flavors like "ice zongzi" that dispersed the conversation.¹²

Zongzi remains Taiwan's Dragon Boat Festival symbol, but its boundaries are expanding — from traditional meat zongzi to hotel premium editions, from vegetarian vegetable zongzi to matcha ice cream zongzi; every generation is redefining "what a zongzi should be."

Why This Matters

Taiwan's zongzi debate looks on the surface like a taste argument, but at its core it is a microcosm of identity.

The reason you think "zongzi should look like this" is that in the kitchen where you grew up, someone spread bamboo leaves on the table on Dragon Boat Festival day and shaped the rice into that form with their hands. That gesture, that fragrance — that is your coordinate.

Northern zongzi, southern zongzi, Hakka zongzi, mainlander zongzi, vegetarian zongzi, millet zongzi — not one is "more Taiwanese" than the others; every one of them is an island story that really happened.

It's just that nobody wants to lose the argument.

Further Reading

• Is the Dragon Boat Festival zongzi you eat Southern or Northern? (Cuisine Taiwan) — Interviews with Taiwanese mothers on North-South zongzi differences
• Taitung Tribal Zongzi: A Bai, Cinavu, and DoReMi (Vocus) — Detailed guide to Paiwan, Rukai, and Puyuma leaf-wrapped foods
• Tainan Old-Style Vegetarian Zongzi — Caizongzi Li — Founded 1946, three-generation heritage Tainan vegetarian zongzi
• Every Bite Has a Story: Chewing on Taiwan Zongzi's Cultural History — A guide to the historical and cultural context of Taiwan zongzi