The Dragon Boat Festival 端午节

This year, the Duanwu Festival falls on May 28.
The Duanwu Festival is a Chinese traditional festival which falls on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. In Chinese, Duan means ‘starts, at the beginning, early’ and ‘Wu’ is used in the Earthly Branches to represent the 5th lunar month. Duanwu means the early 5th lunar month.
In English it is referred to as the ‘Dragon Boat Festival’, after one of the traditional activities for the festival holiday. Other than having dragon boat races, people also celebrate it by eating rice dumplings, drinking yellow wine, wearing incense sachets, putting up bunches of sweet flag and gathering herbal medicines.
It is said that the customs of having dragon boat races and eating rice dumpling is to commemorate the sacrifice of the patriotic poet Qu Yuan on the 5th of the 5th lunar month. He was a citizen of the State of Chu during the Warring States Period (5th century BC), who was exiled to the Xiang River by the Emperor. Greatly concerned over the corruption in the government and feeling helpless to remedy it, he drowned himself in the Miluo River. Therefore, this day is also known as the Poet Day.
Popular legend has it that villagers carried their dumplings on 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 dumplings into the water as a food offering to Qu Yuan and to distract the fish away from his body. Another theory says that the rice dumplings were supposed to ward off the river dragon that killed Qu Yuan.
Due to the long history of dragon boat racing in China, participants in cultural and sport racing events there today number some 26 million people (on a population base of over 1.3 billion). Over the past 30 years since 1976, and especially since the formation of the International Dragon Boat Federation and its Continental Federations for Asia and Europe in the early 1990s, dragon boating as a sport with regularised rules and equipment has rapidly spread beyond Asia to Europe, North and South America, Australia and Africa, becoming a popular international sport for a growing global base of participants.
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农历五月初五为端午节。端是“开端”、“初”的意思。地支以‘午’代表农历五月。端午就是五月初的意思。
英语翻译为‘龙舟节’，取自端午节假期的一个传统活动。除了赛龙舟外，其他的活动还有：吃粽子，喝雄黄酒，挂香囊，插菖蒲和采草药等习俗。
据说，赛龙舟与吃粽子是为了纪念爱国诗人屈原在五月初五的牺牲而来的。他是战国（公元前5世纪）时期楚国人，被楚王流放到湘江一带。深感于政治腐败，与无力挽救，头汨罗江而死。所以，这天也叫‘诗人节’。
盛传乡民把粽子放在船上，划到江的中央，拼命地要抢救他，可是不成功。为了要使鱼儿与恶鬼远离屈原的身体，他们击鼓并以船桨溅水。他们还把米粽丢进河里，奉献给屈原，又可以把鱼儿从他的身体旁引开。另一个说法是米粽其实是为了挡住那个杀死屈原的河里的龙。
由于赛龙舟在中国的历史悠久，今日参与这些文化与运动竞赛的人估计有两千六百万（以十三亿人口计算）。自1976年起，过去三十多年以来，尤其是在1990年在初期国际龙舟联合会及其亚洲及欧洲的洲际联合会成立以后，龙舟赛作为一种运动，有了规划的条文与设备，很快地由亚洲传到欧洲、南北美洲、澳洲与非洲等地区，成为一种有全球观众基础的国际运动。