Dumplings simmer in poetry, history at Dragon Boat Festival

Consumers can stick with the traditional - or try something exotic

Depending on which version of the legend you believe, the ghost of drowned statesman-poet Chu Yuan wanted his rice offerings either in a bamboo tube with the ends sealed with leaves, or wrapped in silk, to protect them from turtles and fish.

More than 1,000 years later, another statesman-poet, Su Dongpo, invented a tasty dish of pork stewed in a dark sauce that has been a delicacy in the eastern city of Hangzhou ever since.

Two thousand years later, the two have been brought together in Hong Kong by makers of rice dumplings, seeking to tempt the taste buds of people celebrating the festival held in Chu's memory.

For weeks before the Tuen Ng, or Dragon Boat Festival, sales of the essential delicacies have been booming. Buyers bored with the traditional sweet (date, bean, walnut) or savoury (chicken, pork, ham) fillings might opt for the superior conpoy variety, stuffed with Japanese conpoy - a variety of dried scallop - and ingredients including mushrooms, barbecued duck, lotus seeds, lily bulbs and duck egg.

The diet-conscious might be tempted by the sweet vinegar mixed-beans dumplings. But for those with a literary and historical bent, there's no contest: it has to be the double egg yolk and Dongpo meat creation being offered by one restaurant.

'Cooking slowly, watering steadily, sufficiently cooked, taste showed,' was Su Dongpo's poetically expressed cooking philosophy, and he put it into practice during one of his periodic exiles, devising his famed pork dish.