People in Jiangsu province are getting ready to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival or Duanwu Festival that falls on June 7th this year.
Students of a primary school in Qidong County staged a performance showcasing the traditional rituals for the celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival. Wearing the traditional clothing of the Han ethnic group, the students recited poems, sang songs and played dragon dances. They were also taught to wrap zongzi, make herbal sachets, hang up wormwood above the threshold and drink realgar tea.
To remember ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan, the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar is the Dragon Boat Festival or Duanwu Festival. To celebrate the festival, people will eat zongzi—an essential and symbolic Dragon Boat Festival snack made of glutinous rice and various fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves.
More than 120 students in the experimental primary school of Jurong County were organized on a fieldtrip to a herbal medicine park to gain the preliminary understanding of the traditional Chinese medicine.
The Duanwu Festival, otherwise known as the Dragon Boat Festival, was established in remembrance of Qu Yuan, a ministerial scholar and patriotic poet of the state of Chu during the Warring States period between 475 and 221 BC.
Qu Yuan, who died by committing suicide in the Miluo River, was known as a good man. Shortly after he died, the local people, at the time of the event, threw food into the water to distract, and feed, the fish from eating Qu Yuan's body. They also sat on long, narrow paddle boats, known as dragon boats, making sound to scare away the fish.
Traditional celebrations of the Dragon Boat Festival include eating zongzi, drinking realgar wine, and racing dragon boats.
The festival date, reckoned on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar, falls on June 7th this year.
