31/05/2025
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Festivals & Holidays
Dragon boat racing during the Dragon Boat Festival
Dragon boat racing during the Dragon Boat Festival Participants competing in a dragon boat race in southwest China's Chongqing municipality, June 22, 2023.
Dragon Boat Festival
Chinese holiday
Also known as: Double Fifth Festival, Duanwu Jie, Poet’s Day, Tuen Ng
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Also called: Double Fifth Festival or Poet’s Day
Mandarin: Duanwu Jie
Cantonese: Tuen Ng
Related Topics: China dragon holiday
Three dragon boats with paddlers in a race on a lake, with a grassy shoreline in the background. Red and yellow buoys mark the course.
A dragon boat race in Lake Arlington, ILThe Dragon Divas of Minnesota racing in the 2015 Chicago International Dragon Boat race.
Dragon Boat Festival, prominent and festive Chinese holiday that originated at least 1,500 years ago and features dragon boat races and rice dumplings. It is one of the three “festivals of the living,” along with the Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Known as Duanwu Jie in Mandarin and Tuen Ng in Cantonese, it is also called the Double Fifth Festival, because it is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, which falls in May or June on the Gregorian calendar. Legends associated with the festival and its observance center on memorials for local heroes. The celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival includes various activities involving dragons, otherworldly spirits, plenty of food, and folk entertainment. The holiday is also associated with rituals to ward off evil spirits and disease, which are thought to threaten during the fifth month.
History of the Dragon Boat Festival
The origins of the festival, according to scholars, likely predate the legends told about it. The holiday is probably associated with ancient fertility rites to ensure a good rice harvest. The association with dragons might have developed from the role dragons were thought to play in rainfall and the importance of rivers in rice cultivation. The festival might have originated in southern China where the dragon god has been worshipped and regarded as a sacred emblem and ancestor.