🍽️ Mugwort Rice Dumpling

Mugwort glutinous dumpling, a Hakka seasonal snack.

Mugwort rice dumpling, or ai ci, is a traditional glutinous snack of the Heyuan Hakka region around Qingming, sharing its root with Meizhou's ai ban. Fresh mugwort is boiled soft and pounded green, mixed with glutinous rice flour into a jade dough, wrapped around sweet fillings of black-sesame peanut or red bean paste, rolled into balls and steamed for ten minutes on bamboo leaves. The dumplings are emerald green with a clean herbal aroma, soft and chewy on the tongue, with the mild bitterness of mugwort balancing the warm sweet filling at its best when hot. Hakka people in Heyuan make ai ci for Qingming ancestor rites and share them as a family afterward, symbolizing warding off illness and remembering ancestors. Wild mugwort grows along the edges of Heyuan's mountain fields, giving the dumplings a rustic freshness. Together with Meizhou ai ban and southern Jiangxi ai mi guo, it forms the series of Hakka springtime mugwort snacks carried along the migration routes.