Dragon Boat Festival is occuring on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It’s a significant holiday celebrated in china, and the one with the longest history. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by boat races in the shape of dragon. Competing team rows their boats forward to a drumbeat racing to the finish end first.
The boat races during the Dragon Boat Festival are traditional custom to attempt to rescue the patriotic poet Chu Yuan. Chu Yuan drown on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 B.C. Chinese citizen now throw bamboo leaves filled with cooked rice into the water. Therefore the fish could eat the rice rather than the hero poet. This later on turned into the custom of eating tzungtzu and rice dumpling.
The celebration’s is a time for protection from evil and disease for the rest of the year. It is done so by the different practices such as Hanging healthy herbs on the front door, drinking the alcohol mixing into realgar. After researched by Chinese Culture researcher, protection from evil and disease is the real and original meaning of this festival. As for tzungtzu, the people in the Xia Dynasty had already this traditional food in fact. So called memorizing the great poet Chu Yuan, it was attached into the festival at the end of the Han Dynasty, and became into the dominant meaning of the Dragon Boat Festival. Since the essence of the Dragon Boat Festival had changed, it is not only a tradional holiday, but also a Chinese culture heritage.
On May 28th this year, let’s celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival!
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