FRIDAY…a good thing.

Today is the Dragon Boat Festival. It has been celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar for millennia. During this festival, people across Asia, and especially Central and Southern China, gather to watch dragon-shaped boats race along river banks and lakes.

Legend has it that the holiday honors the tragic death of Chu Yuan, who died in 288 BC. At the time of Warring States, Chu Yuan was a poet and the minister of the state. The King was captured during fighting and in honor and remembrance of the old King, Chu Yuan wrote a poem called “Li Soa.” This angered the new King, who ordered Chu Yuan into exile. Instead of leaving his beloved country, Chu Yuan threw himself into the Mi-Lo River.

The legend proclaims that the people tried to rescue their honored statesmen by chasing him down the river, beating drums to scare away the fish and throwing dumplings into the river so that the fish would not eat his body. Today’s celebrations symbolize the vain attempts of the friends and citizens who raced down the river to save Chu Yuan.

he festival’s origin is much, much older and is actually connected with very ancient beliefs in the power of the spirits that animated the world and the need to propitiate them. The wish to appease the Water Dragons, who were the spirits of the rivers, will have started on the banks of the great rivers with China’s first agriculturalists.

A popular tradition associated with the Dragon Boat Festival is eating sticky rice dumplings called zongzi. They are often given out as small gifts during the festival and are available from most shops.

The rice is wrapped in bamboo or lotus leaves and the rice is flavoured depending on the region. In the north of China, the dumplings are usually sweet; while in the south of China, the zongzi are more typically savoury. In Taiwan, they may be made with peanuts, chestnuts and squid.