Study Abroad Blog | Blogging From Abroad | 端午节

17 Sep

端午节, or the Dragon Boat Festival, is actually something that calls for a little explaining…I’m breaking my photoblog promise here so this isn’t horribly confusing to anyone…

端午节 (Duan Wu Jie) is a national holiday in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan that is known as the Double Fifth because it falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Ostensibly it celebrates the ritual protest suicide of patriotic poet 屈原 (Qu Yuan), a poet/courtier/official during the Warring States Period (circa 5th century BCE – 221 BCE). 屈原 is mythologized as being a very honorable and moral man in a time of great political upheaval and corruption. His most famous work, 離騷 (Li Sao – The Lament) is a moving entreaty to his emperor to reject the advice and counsel of bad men before the entire kingdom falls…and is also a plea for reconciliation on his behalf. (屈原 was banished a number of times during his career, fluctuating in and out of favor on a regular basis.) What’s interesting to me about the Li Sao is that 屈原 takes on the metaphor of a cast-aside concubine reproaching her lover while reminding of all the good times they’ve shared… which is obviously a novel idea to a student schooled in our drier Western political texts which in no way contain an atmosphere of Harlequin-esque romance…I have a hard time imagining George Washington penning a similar sonnet to Great Britain, that most callow and dastardly of womanizers… ;)

Anyway.

After the Ying capital was captured by the state of Qin, 屈原 drowned himself in the Miluo River in Hunan Province. Supposedly upon learning of this sad happening, local villagers went out in boats to retrieve his body…some throwing 粽子 (zongzi – glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves) into the water to keep the fish from devouring his body while they searched…thus a national holiday is born! Today the celebrations of 端午节 are all about dragon boat races, making and eating zongzi and, of course, not going to work or school.

But. In Suzhou where we were studying, there is actually ANOTHER HERO celebrated on this day…伍子胥 (Wu Zixu). His story is remarkably similar to 屈原’s, only his suicide was forced by his corrupted king and his story takes places about 150 years before that of 屈原. 伍子胥 is considered to be the first ancestor of anyone with the family name of 伍 (Wu) and there is a shrine built in his honor in Suzhou. So instead of memorializing 屈原, in Suzhou this holiday is all 伍子胥 all the time. 伍子胥, in passing, is infamous as being one of the chief architects of classical Suzhou, was a friend of 孙子 (Sun Tzu) and is supposedly mentioned in that classic treatise, The Art of War…or so I’ve been told, having never read the work myself…but, yes. 伍子胥 is Suzhou’s local hero.

However. Many historians now believe that the holiday actually has nothing to do with either of these fine gentlemen and is rather an ancient agrarian harvest celebration centered around a ritual offering of the harvest to the river god (aka Dragon King)...so, instead of having much to do with patriotic fervor, it instead was a festival of dragon worship masked by the superimposition of these two later myths overtop of this much older one. Just FYI.

My class was lucky enough to be able to attend a Confucian ancestor honoring ritual performed by the descendants of Wu at his shrine in Suzhou. We were given yellow honored guest scarves and taught how to make zongzi before a city-wide television audience…which was a bit strange but nowhere near as nerve-wracking as being interviewed for the numerous TV stations and newspapers who published/aired our limited Chinese comments around town that night.

I was the first to get interviewed (thanks to an innocent demonstration earlier on our bus of that little bit of cultural familiarity also published above, my classmates pointed me out to the news crews right away when they asked to speak to someone who knew about the holiday…that’ll teach me). Before the morning was done, I had performed three very awkward interviews in Chinese and one easier interview that Wendy translated for the audience in English…I believe almost everyone in our group was interviewed at least once. At one point (as I was wildly searching for a new descriptive term that I hadn’t already used numerous times to describe my thoughts on China/Suzhou/伍子胥), I looked around and noticed Graham in furious conversation with a newspaper reporter while Natalie was being filmed awkwardly folding bamboo triangles around dry scoops of rice…an interesting day.

The best part of the festival was watching the dances and performances by community troupes, as well as being able to witness the Confucian ritual (which involved offerings of food and ritual sacrifices). I never expected to be able to witness something like that while in China and found it very, very interesting.

Enough talk! Onto the photos!

The colorful and fragrant bag charms bought for the holiday…

Yuki and a statue of 伍子胥...

Across the river from the memorial park…

A community dance troupe performing before the ritual…

Dragon Flag!

Family flag…

Memorial tablet for 伍子胥...

The interviewing begins! Wendy speaking first to the first film crew…

Turning the camera back on the news crew…they were actually a bit uncomfortable when I started taking photos of them, strangely enough…

Their credentials…and the air time of my first interview…

The statue and altar of 伍子胥...

Offerings to the right…

Offerings to the left…those 包子 (baozi – stuffed steamed buns) look 很好吃 (hen hao chi – delicious)...

I love this photo…a mother teaching her daughter how to give obeisance to her ancestor…

What would be a Dragon Boat Festival without 舞龙 (wu long – dragon dance)?!?

And here’s the point where I had the horribly scary realization that I was being watched…like, a lot…even after already interviewing. For the next several hours I worried that I would be captured on camera stubbing my toe of accidentally littering…

I have no idea how long he was standing there. I seriously only realized he was recording me after seeing this photo on my playback screen of my camera.

The sacrificial altar…