The origin of Dragon Boat Festival - Interview with British medalist John Galt -Yorkshire Sharks 端午节
Channel: 王彦工作室Wang Yan Studio
Date: 2021-06-11

As Dragon Boat festival is nearly here, on Monday 14th June, in 2021, I am going to show you how we celebrate in both China and the UK, and the story behind it.

Dragon Boat festival is called Duan Wu Jie (dwann-woo jyeah) in Chinese, Duan means the beginning, wu means five, signifying the fifth month. This date changes every year in the Gregorian calendar, and it lands on a fixed date, the 5th day of the fifth month of Chinese lunar calendar. It is one of the four grandest traditional festivals celebrated in China. Over 2000 years of history, is believed to have originated from commemorating the great poet and politician QuYuan, during the warring states period (475 – 221BC). Even though the earliest origin of the Chinese dragon boat can be dated back to the ‘dragon worship’ in the prehistoric times (1.7 million years ago- 21st century BC). 

 Duan wu is celebrated with dragon boat races, and the iconic festival food, zong zi (sticky rice dumpling). Here are my friends in China, making zongzi for their family and friends, by using these reed leaves, fold it like a cone, fill the soaked sticky rice in, and wrap it, tie it, steam it for about 20mins, and it is ready to eat. My mum used to put dates, chestnuts, and marshmallows inside. You can be creative in making your own. It is similar to our rice pudding here.

Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 BC), the best known legend in China, was a minister in his home State of Chu, who wrote a lot of romantic poems and proposed many reforms to show his care and devotion to his country. After the reform failed and he was exiled by the King for over 20years, he chose to hold a giant rock to     himself on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in the Miluo river in the north-eastern part of Hunan province, rather than seeing his country invaded and conquered by the State of Qin. After he drowned himself, popular legend has it that villagers carried their dumplings in boats to the middle of the river and desperately tried to save him, but were unsuccessful. In order to keep fish and evil spirits away from his body, they beat drums and splashed the water with their paddles. They threw rice into the water as a food offering to Qu Yuan and to distract the monsters, pests and fish away from his body.  The act of racing to search for his body in boats gradually became the cultural tradition of dragon boat races, and the race turned into a team sport event around the world, in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Usa, Canada and Europe.

In the UK, I used to like to celebrate with my family and friends with a big meal on the day, drinking Huang wine and going to watch the dragon boat race when it was on, in Saltair or Leeds outside the Armley Museum... there won’t be races on. But I am very lucky to be able to meet the enthusiastic local dragon boat team, Yorkshire Sharks, and meet John Galt who set up the club.

John Galt is a world medalist, British team coach

#dragonboatfestival #duanwujie #端午节 #yanwangstudio

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