Culture: Exploring the Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat Festival (端午节Duān Wǔ Jié) is a traditional festival in China to commemorate the life and death of Qu Yuan.

The legend goes that Qu Yuan served in high offices and wrote a lot of poetry about China while banished from the country.

Following Qu Yuan's death by drowning in a river, local people rowed out in boats to try and find his body.

They were unable to find him, so the people dropped balls of sticky rice into the river so that the fish would eat the rice instead of Qu Yuan's body.

The Dragon Boat Festival, also called the Double Fifth Festival, falls on the fifth day of the fifth month in the Chinese lunar calendar - the date of Qu Yuan’s death.

During this time, try saying in Mandarin:

端午节快乐!Duān Wǔ Jié kuà lè! – Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

The most obvious tradition of the Dragon Boat Festival is dragon boat racing.

The racing of these boats is linked to the legend of Qu Yuan, commemorating his life and death.

The boats are shaped like dragons (龙lóng) and vary in sizes – the bigger the boat, the more people there are on board. Some have up to 80 rowers.

Each team is led by a drummer, who sets the pace that the team paddles to.

Another tradition for the Dragon Boat Festival is wearing five-coloured string bracelets, usually called five-coloured braids.

Green (绿色lǜ sè), red (红色hóng sè), white (白色bái sè), black (黑色hēi sè) and yellow (黄色huáng sè) are seen as lucky colours.

In some parts of China, parents put them on their children’s wrists to keep bad luck away.

One of the most popular foods for the Dragon Boat Festival are rice dumplings (粽子zòng zi).

粽子 Zòng zi are made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings, which are wrapped in banana or other leaves and steamed.

They are considered as a symbol of luck and the eating of them is linked to the legend of Qu Yuan – when he could not be found, balls of rice were dropped into the river to feed the fish.