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by Wilfred Pilo
KUCHING, June 15: With unerring speed, ‘bak chang’ maker Huang Yi skillfully compresses the fillings of pre-cooked glutinous rice, savoury chicken fillings, half a slice of duck egg yolk and a chestnut into a moulded cone-shaped bamboo leaf, before giving it the finishing touch of wrapping it tightly with a piece of string.
For Huang, this speed and perfection comes from making thousand of these dumplings over the years.
The Chinese national, who married a local, learned the skills and know-how to make the dumplings from her mother-in-law.
“When I grew up in China, I saw my parents making these dumplings, but I never knew how to make them until I came and settled down here in Sarawak.
“I have been making bak chang for five to six years now, and it is not that difficult to put the ingredients together in the bamboo leaves,” she said when met by DayakDaily at Kuching City South Council (MBKS) ‘Bak Chang’ demonstration event held in their lobby recently.
Organised by MBKS and officiated by its mayor Dato Wee Hong Seng, the event was aimed at fostering closer relationships among the multiracial staff of the council and to learn from each other the importance of cultural and festival activities in conjunction with the Dragon Boat Race Festival that falls on June 22, 2023.
Huang further revealed that she preferred Sarawak’s ‘bak chang’ compared to the ones back home in China.
“Here, the taste is savoury, while in China, it is sweet as we tend to use red bean paste as the fillings for the dumplings, while here you use meat and other savoury ingredients.”
Huang said she does not make bak chang daily as she does not operate any outlet for her dumplings, but instead, she and her husband’s family make it to order for a small customer base.
Traditionally, according to Chinese legend, the making of the dumplings was to commemorate a very famous Chinese poet and loyal officer, Qu Yuan in the Kingdom of Chu (340-278 BC).
Patriotic Quan Yu was said to have died by drowning himself on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month after the state was captured and surrendered to the Qin dynasty.
The people who tried to look for his body paddled up and down the river and beat the side of their boat to frighten away evil spirits, and they even threw sticky lumps of rice so the fish would not eat his body.
Gradually, the rowing boats developed into dragon boat racing, and the lumps of rice became glutinous rice dumplings or bak chang which are traditionally eaten during the festival. — DayakDaily
