Dragon Boat Festival

today is duan wu jie.. many calls it dumpling day where chinese eat bak chang/ red bean chang or other types of chang (dumpling).. the festival is known as Dragon Boat Festival in English (i just got to know d name today after i read d newspaper.. even though i neva try making 1 but i knoe it's difficult coz i accidently untangle 1 n fail to tie it back *slap head* so bodoh.. i'm an idiot when it comes to preparing food -looks like i need to attend cooking class already, if not my future-mom-in-law gonna chase me out of d house wif a broom!!!!-

wanna know d origin of dis festival, my mom told me when i was a child; not dat i can remember vivdly so thanx wikipedia for d clear explanation.. here goes d legend which i adapt some of d parts from wikipedia..

it's related to a legendary poet name Qu Yuan... dunno y he kill himself by jumping into a river... d kind-hearted villagers carried dumplings and went to the middle of the river by boat, desperately tried to save him, but were unsuccessful.

to keep fish from feeding his flesh, d smart villagers threw rice into the water as a food offering to distract the fish away from d corspe....

one night, the spirit of Qu Yuan appeared before his friends and told them that he died because of a river dragon... so he asked his friends to wrap their rice into three-cornered silk packages to ward off the dragon.

n so these packages became a traditional food known as zong zi, although the lumps of rice are now wrapped in reed leaves instead of silk.

the act of racing to search for his body in boats gradually became the cultural tradition of dragon boat racing, which is held on the anniversary of his death every year.


till today, people still eat dumpling and participate in dragon boat races to commemorate Qu Yuan's sacrifice on the Duan Wu festival which fall on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar..
~the end~