Turning rice into dumplings

Cook Hong Kong celebrates with food and community service

Tuen Ng Festival, known as Dragon Boat Festival to the English-speaking world, is a traditional festival in Chinese culture. Its origins can be traced back thousands of years. Each year on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar, the Greater China region, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, celebrates this holiday.

In the past, people thought the fifth month of the year was unlucky, associated with natural disasters and illnesses. In hopes of getting rid of the bad luck, they would organize ceremonies and activities, including dragon boat racing and making rice dumplings (and eating them afterwards, of course).

Making rice dumplings

This year, our colleagues in Hong Kong gathered at the office to celebrate this festival by making some rice dumplings. In the rice dumplings, they put marinated pork, salted egg yolk, and mung beans inside a bedding of glutinous rice, which is the traditional recipe. But they also broke the tradition by making some with novel ingredients like quinoa, plant-based meat, and even a sweet version with sago and sweet potato. Many took their handmade masterpieces home to spread the joy with their loved ones.

Volunteering in the community

Not forgetting those in our community that are in need, the team brought their delicious rice dumplings to a workshop of New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (NLPRA), a local non-governmental organization (NGO) that Cook Hong Kong has been partnering with for the past few years.

“By offering our handmade goodies, we hope the NLPRA members could also enjoy some festive fun, like our team did,” said Theo Wong, general manager for Cook Hong Kong. “It’s all about spreading the joy and love.”

Besides sharing rice dumplings, the team also volunteered at the workshop to get a sense of what NLPRA’s food sharing project is about, and how vending machines are being used in the project. The vending machines are used as a convenient way to dispense food items to those in need in the neighborhood. Low-income families that have registered with NLPRA receive a card with credits that they can spend at the machines. Our volunteers helped with loading the machines as part of the experience.

The Cook Hong Kong team set a good example, demonstrating that we could enjoy and celebrate a festival with our colleagues and give back to our community at the same time. With countries in APAC gradually recovering from the pandemic, the Asia Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) board will be partnering with entities to organize more events in each region. We look forward to learning about even more Cook teams servicing the communities they are in!

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