Hi everyone,
Today is the Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Jie in Chinese: 端午節). The holiday which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar.
There are several stories about the origins of the festival, but the most widely-told is that it commemorates Qu Yuan 屈原, a patriotic poet and minister of the kingdom of Chu during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE). Qu Yuan was a loyal advisor to the king, but he was slandered by other officials and exiled by the king.
In exile, Qu Yuan wrote poems expressing his love for his country and his concerns about its future. In 278 BCE, he learned that the Chu capital had fallen to the rival state of Qin, which “unified” China under the tyrannous leadership of the first emperor, Qin Shihuang. In despair at this news, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River, which runs from the province of Jiangxi to Hunan, the province where Mao Zedong was born.
The local people, who admired Qu Yuan for his loyalty , raced out in their boats to save him or at least retrieve his body. They threw sticky rice dumplings (zongzi 粽子) into the river to prevent the fish from eating Qu Yuan’s body. They also beat drums and splashed the water with their paddles to scare away evil spirits.
This event is believed to be the origin of the dragon boat races, and the tradition of eating zongzi during the Festival.
The popularity of dragon boat racing has exploded across the world with an estimated 50 million participants in 67 countries. There are about 175,000 participants in the U.S. and 150-plus recreational dragon boat clubs that practice regularly and compete in festivals and championships across the country and beyond. There are more than 100 dragon boat festivals in the U.S..
If you are in Nashville, please visit Dragon Boat Nashville for this year’s race on the Cumberland River!
Wu Fei 吴非
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Photo by Cheng Feng
#991 — Dragon boat étude 龙舟赛歌