Dragon Boat Festival 2017

In preparation of the Dragon Boat Festival, we held a Zongzi event on 26 May, which was a great opportunity to taste some delicious zongzi and also improve one’s zongzi wrapping skills. The story best known in modern China holds that the dragonboat festival commemorates the death of the poet and minister Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 BC), who committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River. It is said that the local people, who admired him, raced out in their boats to save him or at least retrieve his body. This is said to have been the origin of dragon boat races. When his body could not be found, they dropped balls of sticky rice into the river so that the fish would eat them instead of Qu Yuan’s body. This is said to be the origin of zongzi.