Zongzi, or sticky rice bundles, is one of the oldest snacks in China. It's a traditional food much like dumplings, served during the Duan Wu Festival. Today, some zongzi makers are attracting younger people with the help of Hollywood superhero movies. As the festival gets underway, CGTN has launched a three-part special series "Passing Down Traditions." CGTN's Han Peng starts it off with a focus on a controversial way to promote the culture of zongzi.

Wrapping the sticky rice into bamboo leaves. These villagers are making zongzi to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, just like what the Chinese did over two-thousand years ago. After the wrapping, it takes hours to steam. And you need to make sure no rice or meat leak out of the leaves.

YU MING, RESIDENT HANGZHOU "In the past, you could find people wrapping and cooking zongzis almost in every home, but today, they are disappearing in the fast-paced modern life, because it takes too much time and effort. It's only us, the older people in villages, who still observe this tradition."

HAN PENG HANGZHOU "Yes, not every young person knows how to wrap a zongzi, but they all know how to unwrap it and they all seem to like eating them. Here in China, many century-old brands are attracting the young people with fancy, if not far-fetched, elements."

This hovering zongzi-shaped box holds a cheese-bacon-stuffed zongzi. The Westernised ingredients and the magnetic box were recently patented by a zongzi brand called Wufangzhai.

XU WEI, DIRECTOR WUFANGZHAI BRANDING "We are a 98-year-old company that keeps asking ourselves what we can do to attract younger generations."

To attract youngsters, this leading zongzi-maker in China partnered with the Marvel Studios in the U.S. back in 2016. That's why you find images of the American superhero movie Avengers 4 on the packages.

Some say zongzi and Avengers are simply too irrelevant for buyers to make a logical connection. But it seems a sales pitch does not always need logic.

XU WEI, DIRECTOR WUFANGZHAI BRANDING "You cannot say we are taking advantage of the heat of the Hollywood movie. The Marvel Studios also managed to get more exposure through us to the Chinese older generation."

Behind the booming market, it's the even more booming production lines. Each of these workers can wrap a zongzi every 10 seconds. Employees are all trained by one man, Hu Jianmin. He's one of the few specialists when it comes to the cultural heritage of zongzi making.

HU JIANMIN ZONGZI MAKING SPECIALIST "Passing down the traditions does not mean keeping them unchanged. You need to actively embrace modernity but at the same time stick to the old-fashioned values of craftsmanship: paying attention to details in each step of cooking."

And the Dragon Boat Festival can be a time to reflect how to keep alive the beauty of centuries-old traditions like making zongzi in a fast-changing world. Han Peng, CGTN, from Jiaxing and Hangzhou.