Dragonboat Festival

Dragon Boat Festival never really made much sense to me.  As a Westerner living in Taiwan, the name and the story that I was told had very little to do with Dragon Boats.  From my point of view, it would be like calling Christmas- Santa Day.  However, the connection to dragon boats goes back much further than I imagined.  In fact, here is the story that I was told. 

It has to do with the commemoration of the death of Qu Yuan (屈原).  During the Zhou dynasty (around 340-278 BC), there was a cadet member of the royal house of Chu; his name was Qu Yuan.  If I understand correctly, Qu Yuan was an adviser to the emperor.  At the time, the ancient states of Chu and Qin were battling for power.  The advisors from the Qin convinced the emperor to side with them.  As a result, Qu Yuan was banished for being on the losing side of a popularity war.  He spent the next 28 years writing poetry.  When the ancient state of Qin captured the capital city of Ying, Qu Yuan entered into a total state of despair and drowned himself. 

Okay, I didn’t hear any mention of dragons or boats.  That comes in the next part.  You see, Qu Yuan was very popular and respected.  As a result, the people used dragon boats to sail up and down the river to prevent fish from desecrating his body.  They also made rice dumplings so that the fish that were not scared away would feed on them.  This part always bothered me because it’s like they had dragon boats for something already handy.  So I did more digging.

Peradventure, there was another reason for this cryptic holiday.  I found two other people celebrated in China on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar.  First, was伍員or more commonly as 伍子胥 aka Wu Zixu.  Zixu’s story closely mimics that of Qu Yuan (or visa versa) in that he was a loyal patriot and loved his state.  Upon learning of a dangerous plot against the emperor, he informed the emperor.  However, just as in Qu Yuan’s story, the emperor disbelieved Wu Zixu.  As a result, he was forced to commit suicide.  Some stories have him committing suicide it in a river and others by a sword.  There is a twist in this one that he asked the emperor to remove his eyes and hang him from a tower so that he could witness what he warned the emperor against.  According to Wiki, in Suzhou, Wu Zixu is still celebrated commonly, and there was even a Zixu cult.

 The other was 曹娥, aka Cao E (130–143).  She was a daughter of a shaman in Zhejiang Province in China.  While at a Dragon Boat celebration, her father drowned.  There was a search for his body that turned up nothing.  She continued the search alone.  She was found in the water, dead, with her father in her arms.  She was deitified and is now celebrated on the Dragonboat festival, but to a lesser extent than Qu Yuan.

Nonetheless, there must be something even further back.   After some research, I found that the name 端午 (Duanwu) in Chinese means “starting/opening horse”-Wiki.  And in antiquity, the fifth day of the fifth month has always been associated with bad luck.  Some articles point to this being a time when deadly insects came back, and some related it to spirits.  There is still debate on this, but it seems that this was similar to a really unlucky day.  As a result, traditions developed to thwart this unluckiness.  Some believe that this is where the dragon boats came in to scare away evil spirits.  Even today, children in schools make sachets of nice-smelling spices to protect them from spirits.  I think this is the true origin.  The name Dragon Boat Festival is just a title probably given by an unknowing foreigner.  However, the dragon boats, rice dumplings, and egg standing really do take the show.

**On a side note, it is believed that on this day, it is easier to stand up an egg outside due to the position of the moon.  I didn’t find any relation to this and the other myths.