Date and names
The Dragon Boat Festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, usually in late May or June of the Gregorian calendar. It is known in Chinese as Duanwu, often translated as “Double Fifth” or “Start of the Fifth”. Like the Double Ninth and Qixi, it follows the pattern of a repeated odd number, which in traditional thinking suggested a day of strong yang energy at a turning point in the year. The sun is high at this time, the weather turns hot and humid, and in much of southern China the rainy season is underway.
The Qu Yuan story
The most widely told explanation links the festival to Qu Yuan, a poet and official of the state of Chu during the Warring States period, roughly the late fourth and early third century BCE. According to the traditional account, he was a loyal adviser who was dismissed and exiled after his warnings were ignored. As the Chu capital fell to a rival state, he is said to have drowned himself in the Miluo River.
Local people, the story continues, raced out in boats to look for him, beating drums to scare away fish and throwing rice into the water so that the fish would eat the rice and leave his body alone. This is said to be the origin of both the boat races and the rice dumplings. Qu Yuan is credited with a body of poetry in the collection known as the Songs of Chu, which makes him one of the earliest named poets in Chinese tradition and a major figure in classical poetry. The festival has long been a way of honoring a person remembered for integrity.
Other possible roots
Historians note that the Qu Yuan story seems to have been attached to an older festival. Some point to dragon worship and water rituals in the lower Yangtze region, where boat races may have formed part of rites to the Chinese dragon as a rain-bringing creature. Others stress that the fifth month was considered an unhealthy or dangerous time of year, when heat and illness were common, and that many of the festival customs were protective rituals. A third view connects the day to the approach of the summer solstice. These explanations are not mutually exclusive, and the old records are not detailed enough to settle the question.
Other figures are also honored on the day in different places. In parts of eastern China, for instance, the ancient official Wu Zixu is remembered, and in some regions other local heroes are. The Qu Yuan story is the most nationally recognized.
Zongzi
The signature food is zongzi, pyramid-shaped or sometimes cylindrical parcels of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo, reed or similar leaves and tied with string, then boiled or steamed for hours. Regional differences are large. In northern China, zongzi are commonly sweet, filled with red dates or red bean paste, or plain and dipped in sugar. In the south, savory versions are common, with fillings such as pork, salted egg yolk, mushrooms and dried shrimp. Some regions make alkaline ones that look translucent and are eaten with syrup. This variety is a good illustration of how regional cooking changes the same basic idea.
Families often make zongzi at home, with the leaves soaked and the rice prepared in advance, and give them to relatives and neighbors.
Dragon boat races
Teams of paddlers sit in long, narrow boats decorated with a dragon head at the front and a tail at the back. A drummer sits at the front or center, setting the pace, and a steersperson stands at the rear. Races are loud, fast and communal, and the boat is often blessed before its first outing. In some places there is a ceremony to “awaken” the dragon by dotting the eyes of the carved head.
Races are held in rivers, lakes and harbors across southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The sport also has international competitions, and the festival was added to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in 2009. The boats have connections to the broader place of the Chinese dragon in water and rain mythology.
Protective customs
The fifth month was traditionally regarded as a time to guard against illness and bad influences, and many customs reflect this. People hung bundles of mugwort and calamus (a sword-shaped marsh plant) on doors, wore small perfumed sachets, and tied five-colored threads around children’s wrists. Some families drank wine mixed with realgar, a mineral that is now known to be toxic, so this old custom is not something to repeat. All of these practices come from folk belief and cultural tradition, not from medicine, and none should be understood as health advice. They are described here as history. They belong to the wider world of folk medicine and traditional medicine as cultural history, and they are not substitutes for qualified medical care.
Dragon Boat today
Today the festival is a public holiday in mainland China, with variations in the surrounding days off from year to year. Families eat zongzi, watch races on television or in person, and some travel. In places with large Chinese communities, there are boat race festivals that draw people of many backgrounds. Customs differ widely between a fishing town on the southern coast and a city in the north, where the day may amount to little more than a meal. What remains consistent is the combination of a remembered poet, a boat, and a wrapped parcel of rice.