There are eight lunar festivals in China, and yesterday we had one, Dragon-Boat Festival. From the article "Culture Immersion", Katherine Rodriguez states that how the Hutong people had the special festival together. The Hutong provides a place for expats, foreigners, and locals to meet and exchange ideas and experiences. The Hutong celebrated the Dragon Boat festival with two cooking workshops on traditional Chinese rice dumplings, or zongzi, traditionally eaten during the festival to commemorate the death of poet Qu Yuan. For just 250 RMB, foreigners and locals, young and old, joined in the kitchen and learned the methods of making the zongzi.
The dragon boat festival, which is on the 5th day of 5th lunar month, has many customs in that day. The first one is zongzi. Almost every Chinese family will prepare several Chinese rice dumplings to eat and to send friends in that day. Normal zongzi just made of sticky rice and red dates, otherwise, in southern, the zongzi has many different stuffings such as meat, fruit and beans. The second one is boating dragon boats. However, this activity only you can see in south of China. In northern, we often climb the mountain for the mugwort and wash eyes with river water before sun rise.
Because the mugwort is useful for many kinds of illness. Its strange fragrance can drive flies, ants, also can purify the air. On traditional Chinese medicine, the mugwort as one medicine, has the function of warming uterus and expelling dampness. The leaf which reprocessed is one of the important medicinal moxibustion treatment.
Another custom of Chinese dragon boat festival is that taking
colourful strings on your neck, wrist and ankle before daylight, and dropping them in the water on the first rainy day after this festival. This means that you will get rid of all illness away for this whole year. But, in my opinion, customs are just customs, some of them are not followed science.
One Chinese proverb says that a person will miss relatives deeply when he is travelling lonely out of home. No zongzi, no relative, no festival emotion here, the only thing I can do just giving a call home and feel how they are happy. In wechat, hundreds of festival pictures are on the show. This lonely feeling reminds me to treasure the relationship with my family. In such a special day, I can still remember the sight that when I studied in middle school, every dragon boat festival morning is a busy day because I ought to send zongzi and salty tea eggs to my grandmother, my aunts and my uncles. My mother always make hundreds of zongzi as a gift to every relative of mine. Everything happened in that time will be beneficial to my life. Thank you, mom.
Resource from: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/dragonboat/
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