Magic of Dragon Boats

ew of China's myriad festivals and huge range of other types of celebration can match the highly colorful, electric-charged atmosphere of its annual Dragon Boat Festival, a day infused with the hues of the Five Elements from the eastern practice of feng shui--red, yellow, azure, white and black--and the all-permeating, lingering aromas of incense and special foods. The cloying summer air is rent, too, by spectators' roars of encouragement for their favorite boat's oarsmen and the incessant cacophony of what seems a dozen orchestras made up only of cymbals, drums and one-note Chinese trumpets (suo na).

Britain's globally famous Oxford-Cambridge boat race was never like this, the day of the "double fifth"(fifth day of the fifth moon), which corresponds to the period around the summer solstice on June 21, the day with the northern hemisphere's most hours of daylight.

The Dragon Boat Festival, rooted in fertility rites to ensure abundant rainfall in southern China, goes back more than 2,000 years. Like so many other ancient Chinese cultural festivals it is still widely celebrated, especially in central as well as southern China with river parades, the dragon-boat races themselves, and symbolic offerings of zongzi (glutinous rice dumplings) to the nation's earliest-known poet, Qu Yuan (see below).

Irresistible Festival

The day or days of the Dragon Boat Festival--venues such as Hong Kong have three days of racing--see good-humored crowds flocking to first watch the arrival of brightly painted, lavishly decorated boats, many of whose crews have been training for months. Craft from 10 to 15 miles around a selected lake or riverside resort, and even from Taiwan and occasionally a western country, make this form of boat racing an annual pilgrimage.

The narrow boats, flags, bunting and banners fluttering in the wind are an unforgettable spectacle as they slice through the water, their oarsmen paddling strictly to the beat of their boat's drum in the stern. The beat increases dramatically if the boat is lagging behind, or if a sudden spurt is necessary at the approach of the finishing line.

Resembling wooden dragons, with a fiery open-mouthed head at the bow and a scaly tail at the stern, the boats are usually from 40 to 100 feet in length, though some can be up to 20 feet longer. Those measuring 110 feet have seats for 80 rowers, while a 40-footer usually has 20. Those from northern Hunan are painted in a palette of colors and combinations representing the Five Elements.

Racing dragon boats tend to be mid-sized, each with 18 oarsmen though the minimum allowed is 12. Each boat has one steersman and one drummer.

Recent years have seen dragon-boat races become more and more international. For example, the Stanley Dragon Boat Race in Hong Kong--the territory's largest, and rating among the world's top three or four alongside the likes of Taiwan and San Francisco--last year attracted 143 teams from all over the world.

Boat crews are made up of Chinese men, foreign men, and foreign women. If you wish to be involved, either as a spectator or possible participant, full information and registration details are available through tel: (852) 2813-5704, or e-mail: dragonboat@hongkong.com

'Poisonous' Month Fear

The story of Qu Yuan (see below), a poet who also served as a loyal government minister in the third century BC, invariably crops up during research of dragon boats' origin and their modern-day festivals. But there are numerous other facts, legends and myths that go back many centuries before Qu's time.

Among them is that the fifth month of the China lunar calendar is supposed to be the peak period for the spreading of serious and infectious diseases due to the onset of intense summer heat. Ancient records advised people to bath regularly, and to not work hard, to protect themselves from the "poisonous month".

In ancient China, dragon-boat racing was a popular sport that could be enjoyed throughout the year. The earliest record of racing comes from about 2,500 years ago. Over the centuries since that time, and in part because of the Qu Yuan legend, such racing became focused on an annual Dragon Boat Festival period.

Lament of Qu Yuan

Qu Yuan was a minister of the Chu Kingdom. He tried to advise the king on how to keep peace with neighboring states, but was ignored and banished from his state. When he later learned that the capital city had been destroyed in war, he despaired and wrote one of China's most famous elegies, the Li Sao, a lament on the encountering of sorrow. He then threw himself into the Miluo River in Hunan Province, and drowned.

People ran to their boats and raced to find him, to no avail. When they realized he had drowned, they threw rice into the water as a sacrifice or, according to some versions of the legend, to prevent fish from eating his body. This rice was packaged into sharp-cornered triangular packets made from bamboo leaves, the searchers' hope being that the packets' corners would further deter the fish. Such packets are still used today. At base, modern dragon-boat races are a re-enactment of the search for Qu Yuan's body.

Delicious Zongzi Survives

The story of Qu Yuan also gives us the origin of a tasty glutinous rice dumpling called zongzi, a popular street-fare specialty still consumed during the Dragon Boat Festival. Legend says the soul of Qu Yuan appeared before a group of fishermen, crying out to them he was starving because a dragon was eating his rice offerings of bamboo tubes filled with glutinous rice. To prevent the dragon stealing them, the minister/poet's soul ordered the tubes to be closed with lily leaves, and tied with multi-colored threads, to scare off dragons.

Today's zongzi is served wrapped in leaves and tied with string. Buyers can see from the way in which the string is wound and knotted which ingredients are inside--usually a choice of pickled egg, beans, dates, fruits, yam, gelatin pudding, walnuts, or melon seeds.

There are many types of zongzi, each with its own particular flavor, shape and leaf wrapping. Zongzi is usually four-sided with pointed or rounded corners. Some come in the shape of a cone or cylinder. The glutinous rice mixture is wrapped in the leaves of wild rice, palm or bamboo. Bamboo-leaf zongzi is a specialty of southern China.

In flavor, the Beijing and Guangdong styles are the sweetest, the former containing coarse bean paste and Guangdong's a filling of walnut, date or bean. Alternatively they can be salty, with fillings of ham, egg, salted meat, roast chicken, duck, chestnuts or mushrooms.

In Taiwan, vegetarian zongzi is made from dry peanut flakes. Meat-filled zongzi consists of fresh pork, chicken or duck, mixed with egg yolk, mushroom, dried shrimp, or fried scallions.

Warding off Evil

The day of the Double Fifth is characterized by the struggle between the dual forces of yin and yang reaching a culminating point with the arrival of the summer solstice, and with the yin principle, symbolizing darkness and dampness, coming into full play.

This is the hottest month of the year, when evil vapors abound--the fifth day of the fifth month in particular being considered the most "poisonous". Every attempt is made to harmonize the yin and yang so that danger and disease can be averted. On the front door of every household, bouquets of aromatic plants, assembled from sprigs of garlic, bunches of mugwort, and the leaves of sweet-flag were tied together and displayed to ward off disease.

The mugwort and sweet-flag were considered especially powerful because the leaves of the former looked like a tiger, and those of sweet-flag were symbolic of pointed, demon-killing swords. In addition, their combined strong odor was believed to be an effective combatant against evil. As an extra precaution, people wore small sachets containing pungent herbs and spices.

Powerful Imagery

Perhaps the most interesting and powerful of Double Fifth charms is the "Five Poisons"(wudu) motif. The creepie-crawlies represented are the snake, centipede, scorpion, lizard, and toad (sometimes the spider replaces one of these). Their images are embroidered on clothing, stamped on cakes, and engraved on paper charms in hope of avoiding their bites or, as some suggest, to counteract the accumulated poison of all five.

The wudu motif is commonly seen today throughout China, appliqued onto everything from vests and aprons to backpacks and shoulder bags. The pervasiveness of the motif in contemporary times, however, has more to do with mass-marketing than any cultural belief.

Essence of Creation

Another protective practice, especially popular with children, involves wearing five colored threads or ribbon of silk--"threads of life" given as gifts to families for the purpose of averting bad influences. Five colored ornaments worn in the hair, and even zongzi, were originally tied with such threads.

The five colors are a powerful motif because each is associated with one of the Five Elements. (Azure equals wood; red, fire; yellow, earth; white, metal; and black, water). The elements, which are natural forces, work together in a cyclical order to represent periods of rise and decay, production and destruction.

Wood prevails over earth; metal over wood; fire over metal; water over fire; and earth over water. Thus by symbolizing the essence of creation, the endless cycle of elements and their correlations with colors, directions, seasons, and so on, are especially effective in banishing pernicious influences.