Chinese Dragon Boat Festival
KUT and China in Focus: The Poet and the Dragon Boat Festival
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This story was reported by James Jeffrey for China in Focus. Courtesy of chinainfocus.net
The poetry of Walt Whitman has lasted more than 150 years. The poetry of Shakespeare more than 400. Both are outdone by the Chinese poet Qu Yuan, who wrote more than 2,000 years ago and is still remembered in China where a major national holiday, the Dragon Boat Festival, is held annually in his honor.
The lunar festival occurs each June, this year the 6th, and involves the making and eating of zongzi— cone-shaped wedges of sticky rice wrapped in reed leaves—and racing ornately decorated dragon boats on Chinese rivers. The tradition has even helped inspire dragon boat racing in Austin, Texas, and other Western cities.
But despite it’s popularity, there’s a contradiction at the heart of the poet’s fete. For many in today’s China, where breakneck economic development is driving social change, the Dragon Boat Festival’s biggest appeal is simply getting a day off work. It’s a familiar problem: many a country’s rising economy and the affluence it brings has generated apathy about tending traditional roots. To prevent that fate befalling China, authorities are pushing an appreciation of the country’s cultural treasures, including Qu Yuan – and conversations suggest that at least some Chinese are solidly behind the effort to preserve historical perspective.
“If you remember your traditions, you are loyal to your country,” said Wang Jihuai, 90, as he took his walk around Houhai Lake—a popular spot with tourists and locals in Beijing—on the day of the festival. “Remembering the festival means you are loyal, as Qu Yuan was loyal.
Chinese Dragon Boat Festival - News
Both are outdone by the Chinese poet Qu Yuan, who wrote more than 2000 years ago and is still remembered in China where a major national holiday, the Dragon Boat Festival, is held annually in his honor. The lunar festival occurs each June,
Rowers in 26 teams battled it out along a 200m course as part of the London Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival at the London Regatta Centre in Dockside Road. Sponsored by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office and organised by the London Chinatown Lions
BEIJING, June 6 () -- Palatable rice dumplings, fragrant herbal sachet, and ancient rituals for health, people across China celebrated Duanwu, or the Dragon Boat Festival, Monday to usher in the sizzling summer days with
It was a gesture of goodwill and close relations between the people of China and Canada. At the time, the consul-general expressed hope that the miniature dragon would serve as "a symbol of success for the plan to hold a Chinese Dragon Boat Festival in
BEIJING, May 30 (net) -- Many old traditions have preserved or revived in China. Among them is sachet making, part of the celebrations for the May 5 festival, more widely known as Dragon Boat Festival. As the day approaches, old ladies in a
Dragon Boat Festival | Savage Minds
The best-known traditional story holds that the festival commemorates the death of poet Qu Yuan (Chinese: 屈原) (c. 340 BCE – 278 BCE) of the ancient state of Chu, in the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty. A descendant of the Chu royal house, Qu served in high offices. However, when the king decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was banished for opposing the alliance. Qu Yuan was accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry, for which he is now remembered. Twenty-eight years later, Qin conquered the capital of Chu. In despair, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.
It is said that the local people, who admired him, threw lumps of rice into the river to feed the fish so that they would not eat Qu Yuan’s body. This is said to be the origin of zongzi [a kind of glutinous rice snack eaten at this time]. The local people were also said to have paddled out on boats, either to scare the fish away or to retrieve his body. This is said to be the origin of dragon boat racing.
I recently discovered that there is some nice work on the sociology of sports being done at National Taiwan Sport University 國立體育大學 , where I found Li-Ke Chan’s paper “Post-colonial Dragon Boat Races: Some Preliminary Thoughts” [ PDF ]. Here’s what I learned from Chan’s paper:First of all, it points out that dragon boat racing’s origins are probably much older than the official story suggests, having been carried out by Southern Chinese clans as part of shamanistic rituals viewed as barbaric by the Han Chinese. Moreover, conflicts between “Confucian orthodoxy with the popular ritual” frequently led to the rituals being banned. It was also banned as one of the “Four Olds” during the early Communist period.
Second, it also seems this ritual was also common in Qing-era Taiwan, such as 18th and 19th century rituals practiced by Plains Aborigines (Pingpu zu 平埔族) in what is now Ilan county (宜蘭縣). This was not a competitive event, and the author suggests that the dragon motif was absent as well, nonetheless they are sometimes talked about as “dragon boat” races in the archive. When the Japanese colonized Taiwan they tried to control these local rituals by limiting the number of days, or forcing them to adopt more Chinese-style Dragon Boat races. The Japanese were also trying to organize and control the Chinese Dragon Boat races, sometimes having them scheduled on Japanese Navy Day (which fell close to the Chinese holiday).
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