Dragon Boat Festival
Traditionaly, Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. The 2011 Dragon Boat Festival will be on June 6th in calendar. It is one of the traditional festival in China, which has more than 2,000 years of history.
The festival commemorates the patriotic poet Qu Yuan (340-278 BC), who lived in Warring States in history of China. He was a scholar who served in the government of the King of Chu in approximately 300 B.C. He was a loyal subject and minister to the King for many years. He had great favor because of his faithfulness, but because of the favor he had with the king the others in the government began to plot to rid themselves of this man. So they trumped up a charge of conspiracy against the king. The king bought into the conspiracy charge and had Qu Yuan removed from his position in the government and exiled from his homeland. As you may imagine this caused a bit of distress for Qu Yuan. He used his talent for poetry to write a number of angry poems about his exile, the damage to his reputation, the loss of his homeland and the people of that homeland. Finally, in a state of depression, in the year 278 B.C. at the age of 37, he threw himself into the river with a huge boulder clasped to his chest and drowned.
The local people, recognizing his righteousness, ran to the river to find him. They took out Dragon Boats to search for him under the river. They also threw a type of Rice Dumpling, called Zong zi into the water so the fish would feed on these rather than Qu Yuan's body.
Many traditional customs and activities are held on the specified day by the Chinese people around the world. Among these customs are dragon boat racing, eating zongzi, wearing a perfume pouch, tying five-colour silk thread and hanging mugwort leaves and calamus.
