There are many competing explanations for Duanwu Jie, the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. All involve some combination of dragons, spirits, loyalty, honor and food. The festival’s main elements, now popular throughout the world, are racing long, narrow wooden boats decorated with dragons and eating sticky-rice balls wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves, called zongzi in Mandarin.
The common story that has been passed down goes with Qu Yuan, an advisor in the court of Chu during the Warring States period of ancient China who was exiled by the emperor for perceived disloyalty. Qu Yuan had proposed a strategic alliance with the state of Qi in order to fend off the threatening state of Qin, but the emperor didn’t adopt it and sent Qu Yuan off to the wilderness. Unfortunately, Qu Yuan was right about the threat presented by the Qin, which soon captured and imprisoned the Chu emperor. Upon hearing the tragic news, Qu Yuan in 278 B.C. drowned himself in the Miluo River in Hunan Province.
When local people heard of his death, some beat gongs and drums on the banks to scare fish and dragons away from his body, some rowed out to the spot to search for it, but in vain. In order to protect Qu Yuan’s dead body from being eaten by the dragons and fish, people threw Zongzi, glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves, into the river to feed them. It was since then that have come into being the customs of holding dragon boat races and eating Zongzi in honor of Qu Yuan.
(Video source: Tencent)