<p class="ql-block"> The Dragon Boat Festival</p><p class="ql-block"><br></p><p class="ql-block"> Huang Shoucheng</p><p class="ql-block"><br></p><p class="ql-block"> The Dragon Boat Festival, a special day in China, is a lunar holiday, occurring on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month according to Chinese calender. This is a significant holiday celebrated in China, with a longest history. </p><p class="ql-block"> It’s a time for people to make and eat a dumpling named Zongzi, the main dish, which is sticky rice cooked in leaves of reeds or lotus or bananas. People enjoy all kinds of Zongzi. There are different fillings inside each one, more diversified, including jujube and bean paste, ham, fresh meat, salted meat, chestnut, peanut, Chinese date, red bean, and even yolk of salted egg, and so on. </p><p class="ql-block"> The custom of eating Zongzi is now popular in North and South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Southeast Asia.</p><p class="ql-block"> Dragon boat racing is , of course, a big part of the festival, celebrated by boat races in the shape of dragons. That’s to say, these boats look like huge dragons.The competing teams row their boat forward, racing in rivers and lakes, as fast as they can to try to reach the final line of drum-beating first. Another drummer, with red towel around his head, often stands at the front of the boat to set the drummer firmly, and beats the drum hard and repeatedly again and again, in order to encourage athletes to row the boat as quickly as they can. </p><p class="ql-block"> At that time, these exciting races were inspired by the villagers’ valiant attempts to rescue Qu Yuan from Milu River.The tradition has been remained for tens of centuries.</p><p class="ql-block"> On this day, families put felon herb on the outside of the front doors from doors to doors. In addition, people drink wine of realgar, or children put realgar powder on their forehead to show the action to drive plagues and evils , and also kill pests. </p><p class="ql-block"> Some also eat salted eggs of ducks, or drink some rice wine.There is a sad story behind this day. Qu Yuan was both an official and a poet. He lived in the state of Chu during the Warring States Period(475-221BC), he loved his motherland, but lost hope for it. So Qu threw himself into Milu River in Hunan Province. It happened on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 227 BC. People threw rice dumplings into the river and raced boats in order to try to drive and scare fishes away from Qu Yuan’s body to protect the body of the great poet. From then on, people have been celebrating the day to remember and memory the great poet Qu Yuan, who jumped into a river for his country named Chu more than two thousand years ago.</p>