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Although there are still two days before the Dragon Boat Festival, Shanghai residents have already started preparing for the important day. Reed leaves, glutinous rice and sachets have become popular at markets.

At the gate of Yuyuan Garden branch of Tonghanchuntang traditional Chinese medicine store, the line of people waiting to buy sachets for the festival is more than 10 meters long. It never seems to get any shorter.

Sachets are usually made of silk with beautiful designs. Workers put several kinds of traditional Chinese medicine powder inside including cloves. It emanates a smell disliked by insects.

“I’d like to buy 10 sachets for me and my cousins’ children,” said a 30-year-old man surnamed Zhao from Shandong Province. “I hope the sachets bring them health and wisdom.”

A store employee surnamed Zhao said they sell about 10,000 sachets a day during the week of the Dragon Boat Festival – far from enough to satisfy demand.

At the restaurants near Yuyuan Garden, glutinous rice dumplings called “zong zi” have been popular with many visitors. Nowadays, people can get dumplings with various stuffings: meat, chestnuts, red bean or sweetened bean paste. But seniors still prefer wrapping dumplings themselves according to tradition.

“I wrap more than 100 dumplings every year,” said Yuan Zhang, an 80-year-old resident. “And then I deliver the dumplings to my children. I think homemade dumplings are more delicious.”

In recent years, some places introduced “aristocratic dumplings” with stuffings such as shark fin and abalone.

A box with only six shark fin dumplings can cost 220 yuan (US$27).

(Source: xinhuanet.com)