Dragon Boat Festival
01 · Historical Records
The Xu Qixie Ji and the Jingchu Suishi Ji record that after the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern dynasties, the Dragon Boat Festival came to be combined with the commemoration of Qu Yuan. Beginning in the Ming dynasty, farmers in Zigui spontaneously organized the “Saotan Poetry Society”, reciting Chu ci poetry or composing fu at the Dragon Boat Festival and echoing one another's verses, a practice unique among Dragon Boat Festival customs throughout China.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
“Five-five (in the lunar calendar), we spend Duanwu.” The Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional festival of the Chinese nation. In the fifteenth year of the Yuanhe era of the Tang dynasty, Wang Maoyuan, the prefect of Guizhou, built a Qu Yuan shrine on Qu Yuan Tuo in Zigui, the hometown of Qu Yuan, and wrote a memorial address; local villagers and dragon boats of every description gathered there as the starting point for the dragon boat races, forming the distinctive character of the Dragon Boat folk customs of Qu Yuan's hometown. This folk custom has continued to the present day in Qu Yuan's hometown, becoming a tradition. The Dragon Boat folk customs of Qu Yuan's hometown are both solemn and joyous, and in general the festival is celebrated three times. On the fifth day of the fifth month, the Little Duanwu, people hang calamus and mugwort and drink realgar wine; on the fifteenth day of the fifth month, the Great Duanwu features dragon boat races; and on the twenty-fifth day of the fifth month, the Final Duanwu sees the sending off of the epidemic boat and the reunion of relatives and friends. The commemoration of Qu Yuan runs through all the festival activities, including setting up altars and offering sacrifices, touring the river, dragon boat races, expressing feelings through zongzi, and neighborhood “evening revels” (naowan); the Duanwu folk process is thereby made more complete, compact and vivid. It proclaims and spreads the spirit and character of Qu Yuan, one of the outstanding representatives of Chinese literati, and the traditional spirit of Chinese culture; making the traditional veneration of ancestors and of heroes more human and more entertaining, it strengthens the cohesion and cultural identity of the nation. At the same time, this festival folk custom has also transmitted the Chu ci and other forms of folk cultural expression, and possesses rich cultural connotations.
The poetry society at the Dragon Boat Festival
A village poetry society founded in the Ming sings Chu lyrics in antiphon on the fifth day, a literary strand rare among Dragon Boat customs.
Rice-field games and evening revels
The threshing ground fills with stage, stalls and visiting kin until late night, a second current of activity running beside the boat races.
Sending off the plague ship
On the last day a reed boat carries the plague away while zongzi are exchanged among kin, and the rites for Qu Yuan run through it all.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Duanwu festival at Zigui is the place where the legacy of Chu is strongest. The Qu Yuan shrine, Qu Yuan Tuo, Xiangxi River and the old streets before the relocation of the Three Gorges reservoir area together form the venues of this festival: altars are set before the shrine, races are held on the river, and the ferry in the gorge serves as a natural grandstand. From the Ming dynasty onward, Zigui farmers formed their own Saotan Poetry Society, and the literary practice of reciting Chu ci, composing fu and echoing verses at Duanwu has never truly been interrupted; today inheritors such as the poet Chen Qicai still chant the Chu ci in the ancient Chu mode, devoting themselves each Duanwu to sacrifices, poetry gatherings and threshing-ground entertainments. In the countryside, mugwort and calamus, glutinous rice cakes (zongba) and realgar wine are the seasonal essentials; between villages, boat processions, epidemic-boat sendings and deity invocations all follow the old rules, so that ritual custom and poetic chanting are layered into a single whole in this place.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival · Dragon Boat Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Dragon Boat folk customs of Qu Yuan's hometown both carry on the epidemic-dispelling content of the traditional Duanwu custom and, even more, preserve the people of the hometown's praise and remembrance of Qu Yuan's spirit and character. The Dragon Boat folk customs of Qu Yuan's hometown are a living witness to the ancient Chu culture of remote antiquity, to Duanwu rituals and the like, and have research value in many respects, including outlook on life, values, history, psychology and anthropology. Tan Guozheng (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han, born in March 1947, a native of Zigui County, Hubei Province. In 1982 he studied ancient-style poetry under Tan Guangpei, Li Shengliang and others, reciting the Chu ci in the ancient Chu mode. Every Duanwu he devotes himself to a series of folk activities such as the ceremonies commemorating Qu Yuan, the Saotan poetry gatherings and Duanwu threshing-ground entertainments, and has actively cooperated with the media in filming folk-custom programs such as “Guarding the Duanwu Festival” and “30 Degrees North Latitude”, spreading Duanwu customs. He has long been committed to the collection and organization of Duanwu customs and to the training of successors. Beginning in 2013 he has regularly entered schools to teach, transmitting the Duanwu custom. He is a representative inheritor of the Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu customs of Qu Yuan's hometown), a fifth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Tan Guozheng 05-2970
- Liu Guisheng 05-2971
- Xiang Fuchang
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。