FestivalEast Asia · China
Dragon Boat Festival
No rule yet
Nobody has written a rule for this observance yet, so the calendar does not put it on a day. A name with a made-up date beside it would be worse than a name on its own.
In short
Long boats are raced and rice is eaten wrapped in leaves.
The story
Qu Yuan, a minister and poet, drowned himself in the Miluo when his state fell, and the people went out in boats to look for him and threw rice into the water so the fish would leave him alone. The boats and the rice are still there, two thousand years later. Chinese lunisolar calendar, not computed here.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Why it matters
Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Miluo, and the people who rowed out to find him and threw rice into the water to keep the fish from his body are being re-enacted in every boat race and every zongzi. It is also an old health festival - the fifth month was the dangerous one, and mugwort and calamus are hung at the door against it.
What people do
Long narrow boats with a drummer in the bow are raced in teams. Zongzi - glutinous rice with a filling, wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves - is made and eaten. Mugwort and calamus are hung at the door against illness, the day falling at the start of the hot damp season.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Told differently elsewhere
Hong Kong, Taiwan and the southern provinces race hardest; Hong Kong's Tai O keeps a dragon-boat water parade rather than a race. Kept as Tet Doan Ngo in Vietnam and, on the same date, as Dano in Korea with an entirely different set of customs.
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