The Dragon Boat Festival (Cantonese: Tuen Ng Jit / 端午節) is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It honours a famous and successful scholar-poet Qu Yuan who took his life by jumping into a river after the fall of the Qin Dynasty to the Zhou Dynasty. He was greatly saddened when the king refused to take his advice, leading to a great war. It is said that the local people, who admired Qu Yuan, dropped sticky rice triangles wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river to feed Qu Yuan in the afterlife. The paddling of the boats in those days apparently were meant to scare the fishes away (in modern today we have the famous Dragon boat racing).
Another, equally convincing, folklore explained: fearing that fishes would eat Qu Yuan’s body, friends and supporters had made dumplings and threw them into the river so that the fishes would eat them instead of the body. Hence the dumplings Zong was given birth.
Another origin story says that the festival remembers Wu Zixu, a statesman of the Kingdom of Wu. The King of the state of Yue sends Xi Shi, a beautiful woman, to the state of Wu to distract its King Fuchai from national matters. Wu Zixu sees through the plot and warns King Fuchai, who became angry and forced the latter to commit suicide. His body was thrown into the river on the fifth day of the fifth month. After his death, in places such as Suzhou, Wu Zixu is remembered during the Dragon Boat Festival.
In Malaysia there are at least 3 types of dumplings:
– Ham Yuk Zong / Yuk Zong ( 肉粽): Salty Meat Dumpling filled with fatty pork belly, yellow mung beans, salted egg yolks, mushrooms and chestnut.
– Nyonya Zong (娘惹粽): A specialty of Peranakan cuisine, the fillings are minced pork with candied winter melon, ground roasted peanuts and fermented soybean paste. Traditionally the dumpling has a bit of blue rice coloured from the butterfly pea flower.
– Kan Sui Zong (碱水粽): Literally translated as “alkaline water Zong”. It is yellow in color. It is usually plain, with no filling and if there are it is a sweet stuffing, for example red bean paste. It is often complimented with sugar, gula melaka or a local coconut spread named kaya.
https://www.wonderfulmalaysia.com/food/zong-chinese-dumpling-festival-malaysia.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Boat_Festival
Question:
1. How is the Dragon Boat Festival celebrated differently in Malaysia compared to China?
2. If you could attend a Dragon Boat Festival celebration, which activity would you be most excited to experience and why?
3. Prayers are also offered during the celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival to ward off bad luck. What do you think about this tradition?