The Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat festival is one of the most important traditional festivals in china. This festival is on May fifth in the lunar chinese calendar. In this festival, different area's people have different customs to celebrate. In my hometown, we celebrate the Dragon Boat festival in the most traditional way. There are three elements you should know about this festival, the legend of this festival, the event of this festival and how to make "ZongZi".
First, this is a legend of the Dragon Boat. At first, the festival was for lustrating the disease. Later on, a poet named Quyuan committed suicide on that day. So the festival evolved in memory of Quyuan. Quyuan is a great patriotic poet and a minister of kingdom of Chu in ancient China. During that time, Quyuan helped the emperor a lot and contributed to their country. However, the emperor was very silly because he believed rumors spread by the mean miniters. Quayuan was later exiled for that. He was very disappointed about that and felt he didn't have power to save his country and that his country's future was hopeless. Because of that, he wrote down tha famous poem "Lisao" and committed suicide by jumping into the "Niluo" river on May fifth. The local people were very sad when they heard this news so they went by boat to find Quyuan's corpse. They were afraid that the fish would eat Quyuan's body so they threw a kind of dumpling tied up with five colors of thread to prevent the fish from eating Quyuan's body Unfortunately, they couldn't find his corpse so they held the fesitival to commemorable Quayun.
On that day, people hold some traditional activities such as the Dragon Boat race. The dragon boat race is one of the oldest activities in china, it has more than 2000 years of history. This is fesitival is not only an entertaining activity, but also an expression of patriotism and collectivism. In addition, we also hang some special chinese madicine on the door to exorcise bad spirits.
The most essential part of this festival is making and eating "Zongzi". On the day of the festival, we need to get up a little early to make the "Zongzi". To mke Zongzi, ingredients needed included lotus leaves, sticky rice and some other seasonings, depending in your prefrence. But generally, we use beans, red dates and meat. To make zongzi, first, use a lotus leaf to wrap the sticky rice, which is mixed with beans, red dates or meat, After that, use five colored string to tie it up in a pyrid-shape. Finally, steam it for around three hours and then it will be ready to eat. It is very delicious and looks very cute.
The Dragon Boat fesitival is cery meaningful in the Chinede culture for the above reasons. That iswhy it is a very important event in china. I am very pround of the chinese culture and enjoy this festival!!