Dragon Boat Festival
Next: June 9, 2027
Rice dumplings and a race on the water.
The story
Where it comes from
The Dragon Boat Festival (端午节, Duānwǔ) falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The best-known origin story honours Qu Yuan, a poet and minister of the state of Chu who drowned himself in the Miluo River in 278 BC in despair at his kingdom's fall; villagers raced out in boats to save him and threw rice into the water so the fish would leave his body alone. Older roots lie in summer rituals against disease and evil at the year's hottest turn.
How it's celebrated
Dragon-boat races with drummers at the prow are held across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia and now around the world. Families eat zongzi (粽子), glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, sweet in the north and savoury in the south, and hang mugwort and calamus at the door. In Hong Kong and Macau it is a public holiday.
Did you know
- Dragon-boat racing is now an organised international sport with a world championship; crews in Canada, Germany and the United States are among the strongest outside Asia.
- The festival was added to UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009.
- A folk custom holds that an egg can be balanced upright at exactly noon on the day.
The greeting
端午安康!
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