The Legend of the Dragon Boat

You may have seen this sport somewhere. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, a dragon boat race was held as an Olympic demonstration sport to introduce ancient Chinese culture to the rest of the world. As we see it, the boat is like a Chinese legend dragon. The fore part is the dragon head, people sit in the dragon body and the dragon tail is the aft for controlling the direction. A person is seated at the dragon head, hitting the drum rhythmically to lead the team paddling together.

There is a Dragon Boat Festival in China on May 5th of the Lunar Calendar (June 3rd for the Solar Calendar this year. This date varies in the Solar Calendar every year) that started more than 2000 years ago. It is one of the four biggest Chinese traditional festivals. The dragon is a totem from ancient times, and there was a very complicated calendar calculation in ancient China. The dragon figure is from astrology and consists of seven stars in the East. On May 5th of the Lunar Calendar, the 7 stars are in the middle highest position of the sky and look like a dragon is flying, which means everything is under the best condition.

There is always a special traditional food for each Chinese traditional festival, of course, and there is no exception for the Dragon Boat Festival. It is called Zongzi and is made with sticky rice and any filling people like, such as dates, yolk, beans and meat. Wrap the rice and fillings with Indocalamus (a type of bamboo) leaves, steam it and then it’s ready to eat. Date Zongzi with honey is my favorite. Maybe it’s time you try it!

Why this food? There is another story behind this festival. In 278 B.C., a poet and minister, Qu Yuan, lived during the Warring States period of ancient China. Because of the corruption of the government, his initiative always got rejected, and he got framed and exiled. He wrote a lot of poems to express his frustration. Due to the wrong decision of the king, his country got invaded. He didn’t want to see his country demising, so he wrote the last poem and jumped into the MiLuo River, ending his life on May 5th. As I mentioned earlier, this day is dragon day, so when people learned what happened, they drove the dragon boat on the river and tried to save him but couldn’t find him. People didn’t want his body eaten by fish in the river, so everyone brought the rice wrapped with vegetables and threw it into the river to let fishes eat this instead of Qu Yuan. To remember Qu Yuan, starting in 278 B.C., people began to drive dragon boats on the river and eat Zongzi.