Leprosy Dumplings for Duan Wu Jieh

Sharing my family's old Duan Wu Jieh story. Photo credit : Google. Written on 5th day of the fifth Moon of the lunar calendar, the Duan Wu Jieh or the 5th month festival of the Chinese.

When we were young we had to be very frugal with our food. 

Even though we could have extra food during the different festivals, we still had to be very careful. Mum would always prepare a chicken or duck so that we could pass the festival with some joy. I particularly loved the Duan Wu jieh or the Jerng Festival, when we had plenty of rice dumplings from my maternal grandmother.

At the beginning she would make the rice dumplings in the Nang Chong house and then she would distribute a lot to the families of her three daughters in sibu, which included my mother's family .

Later she would come to our house to make dumplings just for us, after she distributed the dumplings to the other families.

Here is a story about her Bang Turg Jern (Leprosy Zhongzi)

Ngie mah had to make lots of Jerng for so many grand children. But being the humble ones, my siblings and i loved one particular jerng, which my ngie mah called, Bang Turg Jerng or Leprosy Dumpling. It was the cheapest ones to make as she only had to use some peanuts and red beans to mix with the glutinous rice. When cooked the red beans mixed with a bit of peauts would be exposed on the glutinous rice during the cooking, making red spots. Those of us who liked peanuts and red beans really loved to have this

 savoury jerng made by my ngie mah.

She colour coded her jerngs and we would all receive different kinds of jerng from her, a) no filling b) leprosy jerng c) bean paste jerng d) meat filling jerng...I loved(b) best...our share of jerng would last a week or more of slow savouring of the gifts. Hanging from a bamboo pole in the spare room, we would cut one to eat when we were hungry...The quality of her cooking was so good that none of the jerng would be stale without refrigeration!!

This Photo is from Google..Not really the same but some resemblance of my ngie mah's bang turg jerng.