Traditionally, Duanwu is celebrated with dragon boat races and eating zongzi, or sticky rice dumplings.
It also marks the beginning of summer, which explains how I managed to get a horrible sunburn on an overcast and rainy day.
So, why race dragon boats and eat zongzi to celebrate the beginning of summer? Well, there are a few ancient theories, but the most popular is the story of Qu Yuan.
He was banished, accused of treason, and spent 28 years in exile before committing suicide by drowning himself in a river.
According to legend, the local people who admired him, and the poetry he wrote while in exile, dropped sticky rice triangles wrapped in bamboo leaves (zongzi) into the river so the fish would eat that instead of Qu Yuan's body. They were also said to have paddled out on boats to scare the fist and retrieve his body (races).
Dragon Boat Festival equals day off work, so we decided to head down to the river to watch the races!
There were tons of people, teams came from all over the world to compete. It was pretty cool!
The boats take off rowing to the beat of a drum...
Then reach out and grab the flag.
The races went all day. It was cool to see the different levels, some were very professional while others were just a group of college kids who use it as excuse to drink after (and maybe even before!).
Another tradition is the egg stand. It is said if you can get an egg to stand up on its own you will have good luck for the rest of the year.
I'm not sure what the deal was with the egg drop, but it reminded me of our middle school egg drop contests back home.
The goal of the day was to find a zongzi, but weirdly enough we couldn't find any at the races so went for Indian food instead.
Luckily my friend gave me a delicious home-made one a few days later!
Just in case you didn't get enough boat pictures, you can check out some more here ;-)
I added some new food too, What About the Food?
<3
