Qu Yuan - Folklore Underlying The Duanwu Festival

Folklore Underlying The Duanwu Festival

Popular legend has it that villagers carried their dumplings and boats to the middle of the river and desperately tried to save Qu Yuan after he immersed himself in the Miluo River, but were too late to do so. However, in order to keep fish and evil spirits away from his body, they beat drums and splashed the water with their paddles, and they also threw rice into the water both as a food offering to Qu Yuan's spirit and also to distract the fish away from his body. However, late one night, the spirit of Qu Yuan appeared before his friends and told them that he died because he had taken himself under the river. Then, he asked his friends to wrap their rice into three-cornered silk packages to ward off the dragon.

These packages became a traditional food known as zòngzi, 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. Today, people still eat zòngzi and participate in dragon boat races to commemorate Qu Yuan's sacrifice on Duanwu, the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar. The countries around China, such as Vietnam and Korea, also celebrate this festival as part of the process of cultural sharing with China.

Read more about this topic:  Qu Yuan

Famous quotes containing the words folklore, underlying and/or festival:

    So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio—remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales—we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    The “female culture” has shifted more rapidly than the “male culture”; the image of the go-get ‘em woman has yet to be fully matched by the image of the let’s take-care-of-the-kids- together man. More important, over the last thirty years, men’s underlying feelings about taking responsibility at home have changed much less than women’s feelings have changed about forging some kind of identity at work.
    Arlie Hochschild (20th century)

    Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)