This festival takes place every year and is a national holiday. It commemorates a Chinese scholar who committed suicide by drowning in a river as a protest to corruption (he himself was wrongly accused of corruption). The people who loved him searched for him on boats and made noises to scare away fish from eating his body. They also threw in sticky rice cakes to divert the fish. On this day, dragon boat races are held throughout China and sticky rice cakes are eaten (not wasted :).
We watched one of the many dragon boat races from the very packed HK Stanley beach. The boats are adorned with dragon heads and decoration (leaves) and are equipped with a loud drum that keeps the pace of the rowers. Each race consisted of about 13 boats and lasted less than 2 minutes. Most of the teams we saw were from different companies. There was a scoreboard however in line with the asian spirit of teamwork, at the end of each race it was announced that "everyone is a winner"!
No comments:
Post a Comment