Explainer | How the fifth day of the fifth lunar month – Dragon Boat Festival in China – is celebrated across East Asia: the foods, traditions and the meanings behind them

The fifth day of the fifth lunar month is significant in various cultures. In China, eating sticky rice dumplings and racing dragon boats celebrates poet Qu Yuan

The day has different meanings in other places. From Japan to Korea to Vietnam, we look at the snacks people eat, festival practices and what they mean

Reading Time:4 minutes

A dragon boat race in Dongguan, Guangdong province. The fifth day of the fifth lunar month marks Dragon Boat Festival in China, but the day is celebrated differently elsewhere in East Asia. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 7:15am, 22 Jun 2023Updated: 1:15pm, 14 Dec 2023

Dragon Boat Festival, also known as Duanwu in Mandarin Chinese and Tuen Ng in the Cantonese dialect, is celebrated every fifth day of the fifth lunar month, and in 2023 it falls on June 22.

While it is best known for dragon boat races in Chinese communities, the festival is marked by different traditions in other places. We explain how the festival is celebrated in various Asian cultures.

China

The Dragon Boat Festival is marked by a public holiday in mainland China and Hong Kong.

WATCH LIVE: Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival

In Chinese culture, the festival originated as a day to commemorate Qu Yuan, an exiled poet and politician in the state of Chu during China’s Warring States period (475-221BC), who committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River – in modern-day Hunan province – in 278BC, after hearing that his state had fallen.

According to the legend, nearby villagers threw rice dumplings into the river to distract the fish from eating Qu Yuan’s corpse while paddling boats and beating their drums to scare the evil spirits away.

The Tai O Dragon Boat Water Parade takes place in Tai O, Lantau, on the day of the Tuen Ng festival, and has been inscribed on a list of Hong Kong Intangible Cultural Heritage. Photo: Felix Wong

Competitors take part in a dragon boat race held to celebrate the Tuen Ng festival in Hong Kong in 2017. Photo: AFP

Thus, dragon boat races and eating sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves (zongzi in Mandarin, zong in Cantonese) became key traditions of the Dragon Boat Festival, and remain so to this day.