The Dragon Boat Festival is a lunar holiday that takes place on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.
The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is an important holiday with the longest history in China. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated with a dragon-shaped boat race. Competing teams drive boats and beat drums, aiming to reach the finish line first.
The traditional boat race ritual of the Dragon Boat Festival is an attempt to save the patriotic poet Zhu Yuan. Zhu Yuan drowned on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 BC. The Chinese people, in turn, threw bamboo leaves stuffed with cooked rice into the water so that the fish could eat the rice in place of the hero poet.
The festival is to ward off evil spirits and illnesses for the year. This is done through various rituals, such as hanging healthy plants at the entrance and drinking nutritious drinks.
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