What is "qingtuan"

n. A sweet rice-flour ball, usually filled with red bean paste, traditionally consumed on Tomb Sweeping Day in China

Qingtuan, qing tuan, or green dumpling is a form of dumpling common throughout Chinese cuisine. It is made of glutinous rice mixed with Chinese mugwort or barley grass. This is then usually filled with sweet red or black bean paste. The exact technique for making qingtuan is quite complicated and the grass involved is only edible in the early spring, so it is typically only available around the time of the Qingming Festival , with which the dumpling has become associated.

Much of the qingtuan consumed in China is prepared and consumed as street food from local vendors. The snack is also packaged and sold in stores but can run into quality problems such as misleading freshness dating. In 2014, an inspection of 57 batches of packaged qingtuan from stores around Shanghai found that seven had illegal additives or unacceptable levels of bacteria.