The 2025 Banh Chung and Banh Giay Festival of Hai Duong province is the first activity in a series of unique folk cultural activities within the framework of the 2025 Con Son - Kiep Bac Spring Festival.
This year’s Banh Giay pounding competition has 6 teams participating. Each team consists of 6 artisans who are locals with deep knowledge of the art of making Banh Giay, wearing colorful festival costumes imbued with cultural identity.
The time to steam sticky rice, pound the cakes and complete 5 cakes is 50 minutes. On the cakes are the Chinese characters: "Phuc", "Loc", "Tho" in red. Ingredients include: selected sticky rice without mixed rice, large, round, even grains, no broken grains, no black heads... rice has been soaked thoroughly.
The weight after soaking and draining is 6.8kg. Each team prepares 1 stove, 1 sticky rice cooker, 1 set of tools for pounding rice cakes. Teams are not allowed to light a fire to boil water in advance or use chemicals such as gasoline, kerosene, alcohol... to light a fire.
Also on February 11, the banh chung wrapping competition in the morning attracted a large number of people and artisans to participate. In the banh chung wrapping competition, each team had 5 artisans from Hai Duong, wearing traditional festival costumes. In a maximum time of 15 minutes, each team wrapped 10 banh chung, including 5 salty banh chung and 5 vegetarian banh chung.
The teams wrap by hand, without using molds, and prepare a wooden tray, a pot to boil the cake, a stove and dong leaves. The organizers prepare the firewood to cook the cake, and the boiling time is 5 hours.
On February 12, the Organizing Committee of the 2025 Hai Duong Province Banh Chung and Banh Giay Contest will summarize and award prizes to individuals and groups that won prizes at the contest.
