Zòngzi (粽子) is the leaf-wrapped glutinous rice parcel, a pyramid or pillow of sticky rice packed around a filling, bound in bamboo or reed leaves and steamed or boiled until dense and set. It is normally a fully enclosed bundle rather than an open sandwich, but it earns a place here because it is sometimes unwrapped and split open so the filling is exposed and eaten through the rice in the hand, and because the rice is doing exactly the structural job bread does elsewhere. The angle is the rice as the entire envelope: there is no dough at all, so the whole character turns on glutinous rice cooked dense and sticky enough to hold a wet, rich, or salty core in a self-supporting block once the leaf comes off.
The build is a wrap, tie, and long-cook assembly. Glutinous rice is soaked so it cooks through evenly, sometimes seasoned with soy or alkaline water for color and bite. Two or more softened bamboo leaves are folded into a cone, a bed of rice tamped in, a filling set in the center, and more rice packed over it before the leaves are folded shut into a tight pyramid and bound hard with twine. The parcels are then steamed or boiled for a long stretch so the rice swells, fuses into a cohesive mass, and takes on the leaf aroma. Done well the unwrapped zòngzi holds its shape cleanly, the rice is glossy, sticky, and uniformly cooked with no chalky core, the leaf has perfumed it without turning bitter, and the filling sits hot and intact in the center so a split parcel eats like a filled rice block. Done poorly the failures show fast: rice under-soaked or under-cooked so the center stays hard and the parcel crumbles when opened, a loose tie so water gets in and the rice goes mushy and waterlogged, too little rice over the filling so it spills the moment the leaf is peeled, or old leaves that leave an acrid note through the whole thing.
It shifts mostly by region and by filling, savory against sweet. Southern savory styles pack in fatty pork, salted egg yolk, mushroom, or chestnut for a rich, salty core; sweet styles use red bean paste, jujube, or plain rice eaten with sugar; some are pure unfilled glutinous rice meant to be opened and dressed. The triangular pyramid is the common shape, but elongated pillows and small versions exist regionally. The other glutinous rice forms it sits near, the tightly twisted rice rolls and the rice cakes, are their own preparations built on different methods and get their own treatment rather than being crowded in here. What fixes this entry is the leaf-wrapped rice block itself, opened and eaten through the rice with the filling at its heart.