The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is 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 dragons. Competing teams row their boats forward to a drumbeat racing to reach the finish end first.
Duanwu Festival, also known as Dragon Boat Festival, is a traditional and statutory holiday associated with Chinese and other East Asian and Southeast Asian societies as well. It is a public holiday in Taiwan, where it is known by the Mandarin name Duānwǔ Jié, as well as in Hong Kong and Macau, where it is known by the Cantonese name Tuen Ng Jit. In 2008, the festival was restored in China as an official national holiday. The festival is also celebrated in countries with significant Chinese populations, such as in Singapore and Malaysia. Equivalent and related festivals outside Chinese-speaking societies include the Kodomo no hi in Japan, Dano in Korea.
May the 5th according to the lunar Chinese calendar is Dragon Boat Festival. This is the source of the alternative name of Double Fifth. In 2009 this falls on May 28 and in 2010 on June 16. The focus of the celebrations includes eating the rice dumpling zongzi, drinking realgar wine, and racing dragon boats.
Duanwu commemorates the life and death of the famous Chinese scholar Qu Yuan, he was a loyal minister that served the King of Chu during the Warring States Period in 3 centuries BC. Initially, his sovereign favored Qu Yuan, but over time, his wisdom and erudite ways antagonized the other court officials. And then he was Trumped up a charge of conspiracy, and ejected by his sovereign. During the exile, Qu Yuan made many poems to express his anger and sorrow of his sovereign and people.
In the year 278 B.C., at the age of 37, Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Milo River. He clasped a heavy stone to his chest and leaped into the water. Knowing that Qu Yuan was a righteous man, the people of Chu rushed to the river to try to save him. The people desperately searched the waters in their boats looking for Qu Yuan, but they were unsuccessful in their attempt to rescue him. Every year the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated to commemorate this attempt at rescuing Qu Yuan.
When it was known that Qu Yuan had been lost forever, the local people began the tradition of throwing sacrificial cooked rice into the river for their lost hero. However, a local fisherman had a dream that Qu Yuan did not get any of the cooked rice that was thrown into the river in his honor. Instead, it was the fishes in the river that had eaten the rice. And so, the locals decided to make zongzi to sink into the river in the hopes that it would reach Qu Yuan's body. The following year, the tradition of wrapping the rice in bamboo leaves to make zongzi began.
There is also another version of the story. When it was known that Qu Yuan had been lost to the river, the local fisherman had a dream that the fishes in the river were eating Qu Yuan's body. The local people came up with the idea that if the fishes in the river were not hungry, then they would not eat Qu Yuan's body. People thus began throwing zongzi into the river to feed the fishes in hope that Qu Yuan's body would be spared.
The Duanwu Festival is believed to have originated in ancient China. A number of theories exist about its origins as a number of folk traditions and explanatory myths are connected to its observance. Today the best known of these relates to the suicide in 278 BC of Qu Yuan, poet and statesman of the Chu kingdom during the Warring States period. In May 2009, the Chinese government nominated the festival for inclusion in UNESCO's global "Intangible Cultural Heritage" list, partly in response to South Korea's successful nomination of the Dano festival in 2005 which China criticised as "cultural robbery".
The boat races during the Dragon Boat Festival are traditional customs to attempts to rescue the patriotic poet Chu Yuan. Chu Yuan drowned on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 B.C. Chinese citizens 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 dumplings. The celebration's is a time for protection from evil and disease for the rest of the year. It is done so by different practices such as hanging healthy herbs on the front door, drinking nutritious concoctions, and displaying portraits of evil's nemesis, Chung Kuei. If one manages to stand an egg on it's end at exactly 12:00 noon, the following year will be a lucky one.