Chinese Dragon Boat Festival

I work with quite a few Engineers from China -- some live in Utah, some in California, and some still in China. My boss sent an email to one of them last week about some scheduling stuff, and as part of his response he mentioned that today, Monday, June 9, is the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival.

Neither my boss or I had ever heard of it, so I looked it up on google:

"The Dragon Boat Festival is a lunar holiday, occurring on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.

The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is a significant holiday celebrated in China, and the one with the longest history. The Dragon Boat Festival commemorates the popular Chinese patriot, Qu Yuan (Chu Yuan) who in the 3rd century in protest of a corrupt government threw himself into the Mi Lo River in despair.

Upon hearing the news, local people frantically raced out in boats to save him, and to scare away any fish who might want to eat him pounded drums and threw rice into the river - but, sadly, they arrived too late. As legend has it, boat races and ceremonial sacrifices of rice were performed each year to symbolize the valiant attempts to rescue Qu Yuan. Today, rice dumplings or zongzi are eaten to symbolize the rice offerings on behalf of Qu Yuan.

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 boat races during the Dragon Boat Festival are traditional customs to attempts to rescue the patriotic poet Chu Yuan. Chinese citizens now throw bamboo leaves filled with cooked rice into the water. Therefore the fish could eat the rice rather than the hero poet. This later on turned into the custom of eating tzungtzu and rice dumplings.

The celebration is a time for protection from evil and disease for the rest of the year. It is done so by different practices such as hanging healthy herbs on the front door, drinking nutritious concoctions, and displaying portraits of evil's nemesis, Chung Kuei. If one manages to stand an egg on it's end at exactly 12:00 noon, the following year will be a lucky one."

I was a little disappointed to find out that they don't really do anything with dragons, but it still sounds like fun! I wish we had more holidays like this one here in the U.S. of A. For example, we could all celebrate the Boston tea party by dumping some water-friendly powder into the great Salt Lake! Of course, that may offend the British, so forget I said that. But hey, even though we're still a relatively new country, we have plenty of events to celebrate, and that's fun, too!

Meanwhile, maybe I should order Chinese for lunch, and go by Jamba Juice for a "nutritious concoction", or swing by Panda Express for dinner. Yum!

Happy Chinese Dragon Boat Festival day everybody!