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Dragon Boat Festival Near
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A dragon boat team made up of locals rowed their boat forward on the beautiful Sanya River on June 17.
This was the training for the boat race on the coming Dragon Boat Festival, which falls several days later on the 22nd.
Dragon Boat Festival is a Chinese traditional festival celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. All activities on this day is to commemorate a patriotic poet Qu Yuan more than 2 thousand years ago -- Boat races during the Festival commemorate the attempt to rescue Qu Yuan, who drowned on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 BC.
Unable to save him, the people threw bamboo stuffed with cooked rice (called 'tzungtzu' or 'Zongzi') into the water so that the fish would eat the rice rather than the body of their hero.
This evolved into the present custom of eating tzungtzu, rice dumplings filled with ham or bean paste and wrapped in bamboo leaves.
The celebration is also 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, Zhong Kui. If one manages to stand an egg on it's end at exactly 12:00 noon, the following year will be a lucky one.
(Hinews.cn June 18, 2004)
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