🍽️ Five-Color Rice

Plant-dyed sticky rice, Zhuang festival food.

Five-Color Rice is a traditional festival sticky rice of the Zhuang and other ethnic groups in Baise, western Guangxi. Natural plant juices dye glutinous rice into five colors: black, red, yellow, purple and white. The black comes from maple leaves, the red, yellow and purple respectively from red-blue grass, buddleja flowers and other plants, while white is the rice's natural color. The soaked, colored rice is steamed until glossy and translucent, carrying a faint herbal fragrance, soft, sticky and lightly sweet. It appears mainly at Zhuang festivals such as Sanyuesan, the third day of the third lunar month, and is a staple when visiting relatives, offering sacrifices or holding communal feasts. Five-color rice is both a taste experience and the Zhuang way of using plant colors to express aesthetics and ritual; visitors to Baise's Zhuang villages often sample it during festival season.