Quanzhou -- the Lantern Festival 

This is the making of glutinous rice ball or sticky rice ball. It is one of my favorite foods. And it is also the major food at the Lantern Festival. This is the secret way to make the glutinous rice ball or sticky rice ball. This factory is quite famous in Quan Zhou, every year they are making about 50,000 of these little balls supply to the local market. All these are the materials, sesame, onion, oil and fruit and you put them together... it is also the first time for me to experience this, I did not know it takes that long, this is very sweet. Look at this hammer, to do it right you put this part there and hit it really hard like this... and push it out... this is the secret.

The fillings inside the dumplings or Yuansiao are either sweet or salty. Sweet fillings are made of sugar, Walnuts, sesame, osmanthus flowers, rose petals, sweetened tangerine peel, bean paste, or jujube paste. A single ingredient or any combination can be used as the filling. The salty variety is filled with minced meat, vegetables or a mixture.

The way to make Yuanxiao also varies between northern and southern China. Besides the one we鈥檝e just seen on the screen, another usual method followed in southern provinces is to shape the dough of rice flour into balls, make a hole, insert the filling, then close the hole and smooth out the dumpling by rolling it between your hands.

In North China sweet or non-meat stuffing is the usual ingredient. The fillings are pressed into hardened cores, dipped lightly in water and rolled in a flat basket containing dry glutinous rice flour. A layer of the flour sticks to the filling, which is then again dipped in water and rolled a second time in the rice flour. And so it goes, like rolling a snowball, until the dumpling is the desired size.

Another important element of this Festival is family reunion, especially in Quanzhou, a city with millions of residents with related family members living overseas. They descript Lantern Festival as it is a more considerable event than Chinese New Year celebration.

I visited Lin Family. Mrs. Lin expresses her appreciation of this holiday throughout her hard work. She started with cooking a full meal for dinner, prayed to the God of Heaven, served the family ancestor with sincere ceremony, then brought the glutinous rice ball to the children and friends with smile and satisfaction.