The Dragon Boat Festival: Zongzi, Races and a Poet

Every Chinese festival has a food. This one also has boats, a river and a poet who has been mourned for two thousand years.

The Dragon Boat Festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month — late May or June in the Gregorian calendar. It marks the start of high summer with races on the water, leaf-wrapped rice dumplings, and bunches of herbs hung over doorways.

Here is what the holiday is, what the famous story gets right, and how to take part.

The Fifth Day of the Fifth Month

The Chinese name is Duanwu — duan meaning the beginning, wu referring to the fifth month of the traditional calendar. So the name simply means “the start of the fifth month”: the opening of midsummer.

Its position in the year matters. The festival usually falls between Grain in Ear and the Summer Solstice in the solar terms calendar — the stretch when the days are longest and the heat is arriving. Everything the festival involves, from the herbs to the water, makes sense once you place it there.

A Poet Who Became the Reason

The most famous explanation for the festival involves Qu Yuan, a poet and statesman of the Warring States period, who lived roughly from 340 to 278 BCE.

Qu Yuan served the state of Chu and fell out of favour at court. Exiled, he wrote some of the foundational poems of Chinese literature — including the Li Sao, one of the great works of the tradition. When the Chu capital fell to a rival army, he drowned himself in the Miluo River.

The legend that grew up around this is the part most people know. Local people are said to have rowed out in boats to search for him, and to have thrown rice into the water so that fish would leave his body alone. Boats and rice dumplings, in this telling, are both acts of mourning that became customs.

Two things are worth stating plainly, because they are usually left out.

First, the holiday is older than the poet. Early references to a fifth-month festival point to older concerns about midsummer: heat, insects, and the sickness that came with them. The Qu Yuan story was attached later, and became the version everyone tells.

Second, that does not make the story false or decorative. It makes it a piece of cultural memory doing a specific job. A seasonal ritual for a dangerous month became a commemoration of a poet who refused to compromise. Both layers are real, and Chinese holidays almost always work this way.

Zongzi, and the Sweet-Savoury Argument

Zongzi are the festival’s food: glutinous rice packed into folded bamboo or reed leaves, tied with string, and boiled or steamed for hours. The leaves perfume the rice, and the result is served cool or warm, peeled at the table.

The shape varies by region — triangular, pyramidal, pillow-shaped. The filling varies far more, and this is where the argument begins.

Southern style is savoury: pork belly, salted duck egg yolk, mushrooms, chestnuts, sometimes a whole salted egg. Northern style is sweet: red dates, sweet bean paste, or plain rice eaten dipped in sugar. Most Chinese people have strong opinions, and most consider the other side’s version slightly wrong.

This is the same annual disagreement that surrounds five-kernel mooncakes at the Mid-Autumn Festival, and it has the same function. The food is a way for a large country to keep score of its own differences.

Making zongzi at home is a group activity: leaves are folded, filled and tied by hand, and the wrapping is genuinely fiddly. Most families buy them now, and a smaller number still make a day of it.

The Boats

The dragon boats are long, narrow, and crewed by twenty or more paddlers, with a drummer at the front to set the rhythm and a steersperson at the back.

Rowing in time with twenty other people, at speed, is the point. The drummer is not decoration: without a single clear beat, the paddles stop working together and the boat slows.

Something unusual has happened to this part of the festival. Dragon boat racing is now a genuine international sport, with clubs and competitions in Europe, North America, Australia and beyond. Races are often held as community events, often with mixed crews, which has given the sport a second life entirely separate from the lunar calendar. If you live near water in a Western city, there is a reasonable chance a local club will let you try a session.

Mugwort, Pouches and Coloured Threads

Three smaller customs fill out the holiday, and they share one theme: midsummer needs managing.

Herbs on the door. Bunches of mugwort and calamus — both strongly scented plants — are hung beside doorways. The traditional explanation is that they keep harmful influences away. The practical one is more interesting and easier to verify: this is the season when insects and damp heat arrive together, and smouldering these plants was an effective household response. It is one of the few folk customs where the old logic and the modern logic point the same way.

Scented pouches. Small cloth bags of fragrant herbs, traditionally worn by children. They are decorative, they smell good, and they are the festival’s most photogenic object.

Coloured threads. Five-coloured silk cords tied around a child’s wrist. The custom is to keep them on until the first heavy rain after the festival, then cut them and let the water take them. It is a small ritual of release, and children take it very seriously.

How to Join In

The festival travels well, because most of it does not require a Chinese family around the table.

• Buy zongzi. Asian groceries carry them frozen or chilled, usually in both styles. Try one of each and pick a side in the argument.
• Find a dragon boat race. Search for a club or a race day in your area. Races are often public, and clubs frequently run beginner sessions.
• Hang something scented by the door. This is the cheapest possible observance, and it is entirely in the spirit of the holiday.
• Note where it falls. Mid-June, usually. It is the year’s first proper marker of summer, and it works better when you notice it arriving.

Common Questions

Is this a religious festival? No. It has folk customs and a commemorative story, but no religious observance.

Is the Qu Yuan story true? He was a real historical figure and the drowning is part of the record as it has come down to us. The custom of boat racing and rice-throwing attached to him is legend — and the festival predates him in any case.

What do zongzi taste like? Savoury versions are rich and slightly salty, close to a rice-stuffed dumpling. Sweet versions are closer to a dense rice pudding. They are filling: one is a meal.

Why do people hang plants on the door? Because midsummer brings insects and damp. The practice is older than any explanation attached to it, and the explanation has changed more than the habit.

Can I watch a race without paddling? Yes, and most spectators do. Races are usually free to watch and take place on rivers, lakes or city harbours.

Rice, Water and a Two-Thousand-Year-Old Story

The Dragon Boat Festival does three things at once. It marks the arrival of high summer, it feeds people, and it remembers a poet who has been remembered for a very long time.

Buy a couple of zongzi in June and try both kinds. Hang something scented by the door. If there is a river nearby with boats on it, go and watch.

For the seasonal system the festival sits inside, read the 24 solar terms. For the food culture behind the leaf-wrapped dumpling, start with seasonal eating the Chinese way. More of the festival year lives in our Culture & Arts section.