A HIstory of Dragon Boat racing

Article By Sigmund

Dragon Boat Festival, which is one of the oldest among all traditional Chinese festivals, is now approaching. For this year, May 5th in the lunar calendar, when the festival is celebrated, has its equivalence in Gregorian Calendar on June 25th. There have been various different customs surrounding the festival that have developed through its thousand-year history. The most notable one, as its English name indicates, is the Dragon Boat Race.
Dragon Boat Festival, which is one of the oldest among all traditional Chinese festivals, is now approaching. For this year, May 5th in the lunar calendar, when the festival is celebrated, has its equivalence in Gregorian Calendar on June 25th. There have been various different customs surrounding the festival that have developed through its thousand-year history. The most notable one, as its English name indicates, is the Dragon Boat Race.

There are many legends regarding the origin of Dragon Boat Festival, among which the most widely accepted version is that it’s observed to commemorate the patriotic poet Qu Yuan. However, the Dragon Boat Race, as a cultural phenomenon, can be dated long before Qu Yuan. According to some folk legends in Yuan Ling (沅陵), where Dragon Boat Race flourish, the custom was cultivated to commemorate Pan Hu (盘瓠), a warrior in the Age of Legend (the time before China enter Dynastic Period). In the book Millennium Dragon Boat in Yuan Ling, the legend of Pan Hu goes as this: Under the leadership of Di Ku (帝喾), one Legendary emperor, there was one threateningly strong nomadic tribe, Rong Wu (戎吴) in the north. To protect its border, Di Ku appealed to brave warriors in its tribe to kill the general of Rong Wu. Pan Hu, in that moment, rose to the challenge and decapitated Rong Wu’s leader on the battlefield. He was awarded with the territory of Yuan Ling and married Di Ku’s daughter. They had six daughters and six sons, who coupled after their parents’ death and ushered six new tribes to flourish in Yuan Ling. To celebrate their common ancestor, the six tribes invited a wizard to summon the soul of Pan Hu. However, the rugged terrain of Yuan Ling hindered the wizard from tracing the soul and made him believe that it’s hidden in numerous rivers of Yuan Ling. Given this, he asked the tribe members to construct Dragon Boats to find Pan Hu’s soul. Those prototype dragon boats, after generations of development, has become the dragon boats we are familiar with now.

You might have started wonder how this commemoration to Pan Hu was later associated with Qu Yuan, a poet and official lived almost two thousand years after Pan Hu. The now-prevailing narratives goes as this: the commemorations to the two emerged respectively, and as the different cultures located in China came into contact, they merged some of their customs in some occasions.

According to the survey conducted by experts in folklore, Liu Yuxi, one famous poet lived in Tang dynasty, played a crucial role in this merger. In 805 CE, Liu was relegated to Lang Zhou (朗州), a city around Yuan Ling, where he then visited in one Dragon Boat Festival during his tenure. During his visit, he observed the Dragon Boat Race and composed the Jing Du Qu (竞渡曲 Verse on Dragon Boat Race). When the natives cheered the athletes up with their dialect expression, Hē Zāi (嗬哉), which Liu misheard as Hé Zài, meaning “Where”. Based on this misunderstanding, he thought the natives were searching for Qu Yuan’s soul, whose experience was strongly relatable to him—both got relegated for brave remonstrance that displeased other officials and aristocrat in court. So, in his Jing Du Qu, he claimed that the race was to celebrate Qu Yuan’s patriotic spirit, and as the verse prevailed among reciters, the belief that Dragon Boat Race is to commemorate Qu Yuan flourished.

While the origin of Dragon Boat Festival in southern China is related to commemorating ancestral and patriotic figures, the festival’s northern origin is associated with “evil beings.” In northerner’s traditional belief, May in lunar calendar is an “evil month”: the rising temperature give rise to the breeding of germs and noxious insects, causing epidemics and ensuing death. May 5th is especially regarded as “Noxious Day”, when households practices numerous superstitious customs to avoid disease and poisonous insects. According to the poem, people at them will gather herbs call Ai (艾草) to make human-like figures and hang on the door, or just hang the herb directly(as some households are still doing now).

So, as you head out to watch the Dragon Boat Races or see sprigs of herbs appearing on doorways throughout the city, you now know a bit more about the history behind it.