A special Chinese traditional festival-The Dragon Boat Festival

 A special Chinese traditional festival is coming—the Dragon Boat Festival, also known as the Duanwu Festival. It falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month and has a history of over 2,000 years.

  The festival is widely celebrated to honor Qu Yuan, a great patriotic poet from ancient China. To remember him, people hold dragon boat races and eat zongzi, which are sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves. Besides, hanging mugwort and calamus on doors is another common custom, symbolizing the wish to ward off evil and stay healthy.

Traditional Customs

The Dragon Boat Festival features a rich variety of activities, primarily including the following:

 Dragon Boat Racing: This is the most iconic custom of the festival. People race in long, dragon-shaped canoes to the rhythmic beating of drums, creating a lively and spectacular scene on the water.

 Eating Zongzi: Zongzi are made of glutinous rice and various fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves. They come in both sweet and savory varieties (such as red date and red bean paste zongzi in the north, and fresh meat and egg yolk zongzi in the south), serving as an indispensable traditional delicacy for the festival.

 Hanging Mugwort and Calamus: People hang mugwort and calamus above their doorways. The unique scent of mugwort helps repel insects, while the sword-like shape of calamus symbolizes vanquishing evil spirits, expressing people's wishes to ward off disasters and pray for good health.

 Wearing Fragrance Pouches and Tying Five-Color Silk Threads: Elders give children fragrance pouches filled with traditional Chinese herbal medicines to wear, or tie colorful silk threads around their wrists and ankles. This is meant to drive away venomous creatures and bring good fortune.

 Drinking Realgar Wine / Applying Realgar: Ancients believed the fifth lunar month was a "poisonous month," so they would use realgar wine to draw the character for "King" on children's foreheads, symbolizing immunity against all poisons.

 Cultural Status

  With a history of over 2,500 years, the Dragon Boat Festival was included in the first batch of National Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2006 and became a national statutory holiday in 2008. In 2009, it made history as the first Chinese festival to be inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

 The Dragon Boat Festival is not only a time for delicious food and exciting races but also a moment to feel the charm of Chinese culture!