A Very Festive Family

The Baba families celebrated the same festivals as the Chinese. There was the Dragon Boat Festival in the spring (typically in May).

While these Chinese rice dumplings were wrapped in dry lotus leaves, filled with meat and had a salty tinge to it, the Nonyas created their own version. Theirs were wrapped in a large variant of pandan leaves instead to impart a fragrant flavour, some of the rice was dyed in blue using the local bunga telang flower, and the pork filling was sweetened with preserved melon. The Nonyas adapted the Chinese dumplings to suit their own palate by infusing the filling with ground coriander.