On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, crews race long carved dragon boats, families eat zongzi, and doors are hung with calamus and mugwort — a festival of remembrance and protection, the first Chinese festival inscribed by UNESCO.

A day for heroes

Duanwu, the festival on the fifth day of the fifth month, is celebrated by several ethnic groups across China, and especially along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze. The best-known story links it to Qu Yuan, a poet and minister of the state of Chu in the Warring States period. Banished for opposing an alliance with the state of Qin, he drowned himself in the Miluo River after Qin captured the Chu capital. Local people are said to have raced out in their boats to save him — the origin of the dragon boat races — and to have thrown rice into the river for the fish.

The hero changes from place to place. UNESCO, which inscribed the festival in 2009 as the first Chinese festival on its Representative List, notes that Qu Yuan is venerated in Hubei and Hunan, Wu Zixu in South China, and Yan Hongwo among the Dai in Yunnan; in parts of northeastern Zhejiang the girl Cao E is remembered instead.

Boats and protection

The fifth month was traditionally considered unlucky, and the fifth day especially so. People hang calamus, whose leaves are shaped like swords, and mugwort above their doors, bathe in flower-scented water, wear five-coloured silk threads and paste paper cut-outs in their windows to ward off evil. The festival combines a memorial ceremony with dragon boat races, feasts of zongzi, eggs and realgar wine, and folk entertainment such as opera and song.