Salted Duck Eggs at the Dragon Boat Festival

The customs of the Dragon Boat Festival in my hometown have much in common with those elsewhere. There is the custom of wearing “bai-suo-zi” – thin ropes twisted out of threads in five colors – round the wrist. The threads lose color when soaked in water. So after washing face, we often find strips of color stains on our wrists left by the threads. There is the custom of making “xiang-jiao-zi” – fragrance pyramids weaved out of threads to mimic the rice dumplings customarily eaten at the festival. The pyramids are stuffed with fragrance powder, strung up and hung onto the curtain hooks. Then, there are the red paper-cuts of the “five poisonous creatures” to be pasted at the threshold and the amulets to be put up on the door lintel of the sitting room. The abbot of the City God Temple is my godfather, who has a young priest send us the amulets – often along with two folding fans – a couple of days before the festival every year. The amulets are yellow and blue paper strips, over a foot long, and bear mystical red signs that are supposed to scare away the evils. As for the custom of drinking realgar liquor, while the practice of drawing a character “王” (meaning king, also to mimic the pattern on a tiger’s forehead) on the kid’s forehead using the dissolved realgar may be much the same everywhere, I am not sure about one practice in particular – the “yellow-smoke pipes”. These are short tubes in the shape of large firecrackers of North China, only they are stuffed with realgar powder instead of fire powder. They do not explode when lit, but keep giving off a yellow smoke for quite a while. The “yellow-smoke pipes” are lit and placed under the cupboards to fumigate them, thereby, as it is believed, driving away the “five poisonous creatures”. After these “yellow-smoke pipes” have burnt out, kids use them to write the character “虎” (meaning tiger) on the walls. As the character must be finished nonstop at one stroke without any interruption, all kids in my hometown are capable of writing it in cursive. Ah, yes, there is one more tradition customarily called “twelve reds”, referring to twelve dishes in red color. What a pity I have forgotten all but three of them – fried amaranthus, stir-fried shrimps, and salted duck eggs. Perhaps, “twelve reds” is just a concept and there are not necessarily twelve dishes. However, I am absolutely certain that, on this festival, all the dishes for lunch must be red and that the just-mentioned three dishes are compulsory. Anyway, these three dishes are not hard to come by and are affordable to most households.

A land crisscrossed by rivers and lakes, Gaoyou, my hometown, is an ideal breeding ground for ducks. Gaoyou mallard is a fairly famous duck breed. The ducks lay eggs, and the local people are good at making pickled duck eggs, hence the reputation of Gaoyou salted duck eggs. When I was in Southern Jiangsu or in Zhejiang, anyone learning upon inquiry about my native place would marvel with admiration, “Oh, so your hometown produces salted duck eggs!” In Shanghai, shops selling pickled foods usually sell salted duck eggs, too; and they invariably put up a label reading “Gaoyou Salted Eggs”. Of particular note are Gaoyou’s double-yolk eggs. Though duck eggs produced elsewhere occasionally have double yolks, too, the incidence is far lower than in Gaoyou where double-yolk eggs can be produced in quantity. In fact, double-yolk or otherwise, they are duck eggs all the same, and there is little difference in their taste. Nevertheless, when you cut open one double-yolk egg with a kitchen knife, the sight of the two round yolks amid the egg white is really amazing. However, it delights me little to hear people elsewhere speak approvingly of Gaoyou duck eggs, because such compliments sound as if duck eggs were the only thing we have. Yet Gaoyou’s salted duck eggs are indeed delicious. I have been to many places and tasted all kinds of duck eggs, none of which, I am afraid, is comparable with those of my hometown. As one who has seen the great seas is never content with a mere pool, I find nothing lovely in the salted duck eggs produced anywhere else. In Yuan Mei’s Recipes from the Garden of Contentment, there is an entry entitled “Pickled Eggs” in the “Supplementary Dishes” chapter. I do not like the author, who, being no chef at all, has compiled the Recipes based on hearsay rather than first-hand cooking experience. However, the entry of “Pickled Eggs” strikes a chord with me, filling me with pride. It is a short paragraph, which I would quote as follows:

Pickled eggs had better be made of Gaoyou duck eggs, which have fine and delicate color and are oily. They are a favorite with His Lordship Gao. At a dinner, the egg is served to the guest first as a gesture of politeness and placed on his plate. Normally, it is sliced open without being shelled so that both the yolk and the egg whites can be eaten together. Do NOT get rid of the egg whites before eating for that would lead to a loss of taste and oil.

Gaoyou salted eggs have a fine texture and are oily. Unlike eggs produced elsewhere whose whites taste dry and powdery like lime powder, their egg whites are tender and soft, and their oiliness is even more pronounced. As for the eating method, you may do as Yuan Mei does by cutting open the egg without peeling its shell off. But that is the way to entertain guests at a banquet. A more common method, as we do every day, is to crack open the eggshell on its “void side” and then poke into the egg with chopsticks. Thrust a chopstick into the egg, and with a squeak, red oil oozes out. The yolk of a Gaoyou salted egg has a vermilion color. It is an essential ingredient in a Northern-Jiangsu delicacy called “vermilion tofu”, in which bean curd is fried with the yolks of Gaoyou salted eggs. By comparison, the salted eggs I have ever tasted in Beijing only have light yellow yolks. Oh, I don’t think they could be called salted duck eggs at all.

At the Dragon Boat Festival, kids in my hometown customarily wear a string bag holding a duck egg. The string bag is weaved out of color threads one day ahead of the festival by the womenfolk. When the duck eggs are done early in the morning the next day, the kids may each pick one for their respective string bag. Are there any selection criteria? Yes, there are. First, select those whose eggshell is blueish rather than white. Second, pick the good-looking ones. Don’t think all duck eggs are much the same; they do differ upon a closer look. Some duck eggs look dull and stupid, while some others more graceful. The handpicked egg is put in the string bag, which is hung onto a button of the jacket. You may ask, does it look interesting? But it is indeed a fancy decoration for the kids, who, after wearing it for quite a few days, may open the bag and eat the egg upon impulse. The duck eggs of this season normally have just been pickled recently and taste only slightly salty – good for eating without anything else.

The kids have their own way of eating duck eggs. They will avoid cracking the eggshell except making a hole through its void side, through which the egg white and the yolk is gouged out and eaten. The empty eggshell is then washed clean, to be filled with fireflies captured at night before sealing off the broken part with a tiny patch of thin cloth. It is good fun to watch the eggshell gleaming with the twinkle of fireflies.