Happy 端午节!

Everyone knows that this festival is to commemorate the poet 屈原, who was sadly misunderstood in his time which led to his suicide. Some say that it was because he was, erhm, not of the straight persuasion.

Of course, that point is neither here nor there.

Anyway, do you know that another dude's death is also remembered on this date by some folks in China?

伍子胥 was some advisor or something in the imperial court of the Wu state in olden days China, but his advice was ignored by his sire in favour of some traitor's words, and he was forced to commit suicide for alleged sabotage. The state later fell into the enemy's hands, of course, and the silly King committed suicide after grieving over his maligned loyal subject.

Hmmm, how come these ancient stories are always like that? Why do most of the Kings ALWAYS believe the bad guys first and then later regret? Why are they so S-TU-PID? And is it considered a suicide if it's a FORCED one?

Oh well... But anyway, 伍子胥, YOUR WISDOM SHALL NOT BE FORGOTTEN!

Here are some pictures of the bak zang made by Linda's Mum.



Look like pillows hor? Macau and Hong Kong bak zangs are all this shape. And the big one is huge! Three of us couldn't finish even the small one this morning, so we just ate the filling.


The yellowish thingies is 绿豆沙， I think.

Macau-style bak zangs are very different from Singapore ones. Not just in terms of the shape. They are not as salty and seem to have a lot of glutinous rice and only meat in the middle, unlike Singaporeans who put in mushrooms, peanuts, salted eggs, etc.

Which reminds me, I saw this bak zang shop in Hong Kong which was selling ham and cheese bak zang. Haha, but it was so crowded so I didn't stop to check it out.

And here's a bit of trivia to make all my good friends in Singapore jealous; today is a public holiday for the good people of Macau S.A.R. Apparently the government here thinks eating bak zang is a very important thing that people must take a rest day for it.

Hoho, how lucky!