Dragon Boat Festival (端午節; duan1wu3jie2) occurs every year on the 5th day of the 5th lunarsolar month, which was June 19 this year (2026). One way that people celebrate is by wrapping and eating zongzi (粽子; sticky rice dumplings).
For Dragon Boat Festival last year (May 31, 2025), I attended a Taiwanese culture club event at National Taiwan University, where they had prepared all the ingredients for the zongzi.
The timing was actually perfect, because finals week was right after Dragon Boat Festival, and "wrapping zongzi" (包粽; bao1zong4) sounds similar to 包中 (bao1zhong4; short for 包考中 or "ensure [you] pass the exam"). Many families will wrap zongzi before a big exam to give their kids a boost of luck.
Since we were making Taiwanese vegan zongzi, they provided glutinous rice stir-fried with peanuts, shitake mushrooms, chestnuts, gluten (in place of pork), kabocha (in place of egg yolk), and more roasted peanuts. (There are no peanuts in the batch in the picture, though, as it was prepared separately from the rest.)
Zongzi in Taiwan can be split into northern and southern types, which differ in ingredients and cooking methods. Other types exist, but are not as popular. Since we were in Taipei, we made northern Taiwanese zongzi (北部粽), in which the glutinous rice is stir-fried, and the wrapped zongzi are steamed. Southern Taiwanese zongzi (南部粽) instead use raw or half-stir-fried glutinous rice, and the wrapped zongzi are boiled. Many southerners will say that northern zongzi is just fried sticky rice (油飯; you2fan4) in the shape of zongzi (my southerner roommates agree), and many northerners find southern zongzi to be too gummy. As a result, every year there are arguments over which is better. (Sidenote: 北方/南方 is used to refer to southern/northern Mainland China, 北部/南部 is used to refer to southern/northern Taiwan).
They then had a few alumni teach everyone how to wrap the zongzi. The method we used was the same as in this video, only there was a lot of emphasis on compacting the rice before wrapping. Since this was a culture club for Taiwanese students to mingle with foreign exchange students, half the attendees did not speak Mandarin (or at least, not to a high enough level), so they had me interpret the instructions into English. I think I did okay for my first time interpreting!
Although it was my first time wrapping zongzi, I ended up helping a few others out and wrapped 6 of them! I was a little surprised how few of the Taiwanese attendees had wrapped zongzi before.
We each got to take 2 home to eat. I didn't have soy sauce paste, so I made do with normal soy sauce.