The Dragon Boat Festival, celebrated on Day 5 of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar sees participants compete in races on boats with dragon heads.
HONG KONG: The rhythmic beat of countless drums echoed across China on Wednesday morning, as millions of people celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival, which commemorates an ancient historic tale of palace intrigues, corrupt courtiers and a crusading patriot whose life story could well be a political allegory of these times.
The festival, traditionally celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, sees teams of participants compete in races on boats with dragon heads.
A drummer keeps time for the rowers who paddle furiously away with perfect synchronicity. In terms of scale, the snake boat races in Alappuzha in Kerala’s backwaters may be rather more spectacular and energetic, but the Dragon Boat races have an enduring charm of their own. So popular are they today that in Hong Kong, for instance, even the large flock of expatriate investment bankers trade in their business suits for the day and slip into their team colours, either as rowers or as cheerleaders.
It’s also a day when glutinous rice dumplings, called zongzi, are eaten at festive family meals; typically the dumplings come packed in bamboo or reed leaves that are shaped like pyramids. This year, however, the mainland government put out an alert saying that unscrupulous traders were coating the bamboo leaves with toxic, copper-based chemicals to keep them green. That, however, did little to take the joy out of this year’s festivities.
Although it’s marked by much gaiety today, the Dragon Boat Festival in fact commemorates the tortured life Qu Yuan, a court poet in the Chu Kingdom (475-221 BC) in the current-day southern Chinese provinces of Hunan and Hubei, who was done in by corrupt mandarins and was sent into exile. Heartbroken, Qu composed some of the finest poems in early Chinese literature; these showcased his patriotism and his concern for the country’s future. He later drowned himself in the Miluo river as a form of protest against corrupt courtiers. Legend has it that local community members rushed out on boats to rescue him; and in order to scare away or distract the fish that was trying to eat his body, they beat drums, threw rice dumplings into the water and splashed the water with their oars. Thus was born the tradition of the Dragon Boat Festival.
Qu’s life-story makes for an interesting political allegory of current-day China. Subtle power tussles and intrigues are not uncommon within the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), although the so-called “Shanghai faction” led by former President Jiang Zemin, which once held sway, is no longer as powerful. In fact, even the anti-corruption campaigns that are periodically undertaken are an extension of the factional tussles at the top.
And in the run-up to next year’s 17th CCP Congress, the jockeying for power — which is beginning to manifest itself in the personnel changes being made at the provincial, city, county and township level — is only bound to intensify. Just as in Qu’s time, public disenchantment with corruption in high places — particularly, the so-called “princelings” (children of the old guard who have profited from their lineage) — runs high; even the state-run media is occasionally constrained to acknowledge this.
But the tolerance level for non-official ‘crusades’ against corruption is very low, and there are no legitimate channels for ordinary people to articulate their concerns. The dragon boat drums may boom today in memory of that ancient Chinese crusader against corruption, but it’s fair to say that Qu’s fate wouldn’t have been markedly different in today’s China.
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