CHANGSHA, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Cheng Shanshan has been living in New Jersey for six years, but she never missed a single Dragon Boat Festival, and the most iconic way to celebrate the annual festival is eating zongzi or glutinous rice dumpling.

The festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth month according to the Chinese lunar calendar. And, this year it was celebrated Thursday in China. Cheng began her day by shopping at an Asian supermarket. In addition to zongzi, she bought some moxa sticks to fumigate the house.

Zongzi is a traditional Chinese delicacy that is wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves.

Cheng, who grew up in east China's Shandong Province, told Xinhua via WeChat that she "doesn't really fancy eating zongzi, but will not miss out on the zongzi shopping each year."

"It's like a habit," she said. "For overseas Chinese like us, the fragrance of zongzi leaves induces nostalgia of distant hometown and a bite of the glutenous rice and fillings embodies the best wishes to our families and friends."

Cheng is among many overseas Chinese who celebrate this traditional festival. Each year prior to the Dragon Boat Festival, zongzi imported from China sell like "hot pies" in Asian supermarket chains and Chinese restaurants. Lately, this traditional snack has also hit the shelves at several mainstream American supermarkets.

Making a zongzi is like completing a gastronomic jigsaw puzzle. Delicacies and specialties from across China such as glutinous rice, seasoned meat stuffing, candied dates, red beans and salted egg yolks can all be wrapped up into green leaves. The length, thickness and color of the leaves also differ to meet the preferences of customers.

A far-flung mountainous county called Sangzhi in central China's Hunan Province is somehow connected with these sticky rice dumplings as a long-standing production base for zongzi leaves.

Shrouded in misty clouds all year round, the county with humid air, abundant water and a huge variation in temperature between day and night boasts favorable conditions for the growth of zongzi leaves. There are over 17,000 hectares of wild bamboo leaves in the county, mostly growing on high mountains more than 800 meters above the sea level.

As the local economy took off and transportation improved in recent years, quality zongzi leaves from the remote inland county have found their way onto the dining tables across China and beyond.

The brand "Sangzhi leaves" witnessed a stable yearly surge in orders, as an increasing number of food producers inked cooperation deals with local leaf-producing factories.

Wang Yafei, vice president of Synear Food Company, a leading Chinese brand producing frozen snacks, said his company purchases bundles of leaves from the county all year round and has been in partnership with Zhangjiajie Kanghua industrial company, a major producer of local zongzi leaves, for over six years.

"The once seasonal supply has been stretched to the entire year," Wang said, adding that sales of their zongzi in Europe and the United States have been encouraging.

Describing Zongzi as a tasty snack with a distinct flavor of the Chinese culture, Wang said that his company has been striving to introduce new flavors to appeal to growing international consumers.

"As Chinese cuisines and delicacies gain more global recognition, we must continue to innovate," he said.

Peng Chunhua, general manager of Kanghua, said leaves from Sangzhi, compared with bamboo leaves elsewhere, are larger, longer, softer and more fragrant, and therefore more popular among domestic and foreign buyers. Her company has raked in export revenue of 330,000 U.S. dollars from January to June this year by supplying processed bamboo leaves to Japan, Singapore and as far as Europe and America.

Besides spreading the unique fragrance of bamboo overseas, these leaves have generated stable jobs and decent incomes for the locals, including struggling farmers, stay-at-home moms and the disabled. More than 80,000 locals have already shaken off poverty thanks to the "magic leaves."

Peng said that in the past three years, her company has invested a total of 2.6 million yuan (about 367,000 dollars) in research and development, and has been working with research institutes to breed better varieties of bamboo leaves, develop bamboo leaf handicraft and invent an automatic leaf-sorting machine. They are also experimenting on the deep processing of zongzi leaves to extract the aroma to make leaf essence, beverage and skincare products.

"Our aim is to spread the fragrance of our mountain leaves far and wide," she said.