The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is a significant holiday celebrated in China, and the one with the longest history. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by boat races in the shape of dragons. Competing teams row their boats forward to a drumbeat racing to reach the finish end first.
The Dragon Boat Festival, also called the Duanwu Festival, is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month according to the Chinese calendar. For thousands of years, the festival has been marked by eating zong and racing dragon boats.
It has been held annually for more than 2,000 years and is notable for its educational influence. The festival commemorates the patriotic poet Qu Yuan, and also acts as a chance for Chinese people to build their bodies and dispel diseases. Many legends circulate around the festival but the most popular is the legend of Qu Yuan.
A very popular dish during the Dragon Boat Festival is Zongzi. This tasty food consists of rice dumplings with jujube, meat and other fillings wrapped with reed leaves or bamboos. Zongzi is made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. They are cooked by steaming or boiling. The shape of Zongzi ranges from relatively tetrahedral to cylindrical.
During the Duanwu Festival, a glutinous rice pudding called zong zi is eaten to symbolize the rice offerings to Qu. Ingredients such as beans,lotus seeds, chestnuts, pork fat and the golden yolk of a salted duck egg are often added to the glutinous rice. The pudding is then wrapped with bamboo leaves, bound with a kind of raffia and boiled in salt water for hours.
Dragon Boat Race is the most important activity during the Dragon Boat Festival. It is quite popular in the South part of China. Chinese people keep those traditional activities like preparing and eating Zongzi, dragon boat racing, and also have much more time to go traveling or get back hometown and be together with thier families.So you may feel special.
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