Know Chinese Dragon Boat Festival

As is known to all, China has a long history and so many traditional festivals. Our Dragon Boat Festival is coming this time, let’s know more about this festival with Brinyte flashlight.

The fifth day of the fifth lunar is a traditional Chinese folk festival—the Dragon Boat Festival, also as know as the “Festival of the Fifth Month”. On that day, people eat Zongzi(pyramid-shaped dumpling made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves) and hold dragon-boat races. It is said, these activities commemorate the great patriotic poet Qu Yuan in ancient China.

Qu Yuan lived in the state of Chu in the Warring States Period (475 BC – 221 BC). Among the state of Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei and Qin, the state of Qin was the strongest, and it wished to annex the others to become even more powerful. Qu Yuan was a Dafu. He maintained that Chu’s politics should b be reformed and that it should unite with the other states to resist Qin. But his stand was opposed by crafty sycophants, who used malicious to persuade the king of Chu not to adopt the idea and to drive Qu Yuan from the capital. Despite being exiled, Qu Yuan was still concerned about the fate of his state. Later, when he heard the news that Qin had defeated the State of Chu, he was full of grief and felt that he had no power to save his motherland, so he drowned himself in the Miluo River. It was the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 278BC.

When people heard the news, they rowed their boats to try to find his corpse, people threw food into the river to feed them. Thereafter, on each fifth day of the fifth lunar month, people would throw food into the river. Later, people used reed leaves to wrap Zongzi for this purpose. Thus the custom of eating Zongzi and staging the dragon boat race was formed.

Up to the present, the dragon boat race is not only limited to the Dragon Boat Festival, but has also spread to many places around the world, and even became a an important match. In rural areas of China, the dragon boat race has taken root as a physical activity. People say “We would waste one year farming rather than lose one year’s dragon boat race.”