While we’re busy prepping for our holiday season, I figured I’d post something about a Chinese holiday. This is a culturally-rich and comfortably intermediate essay describing how one family celebrates the Dragon Boat Festival (端午节 duān wǔ jié. If you’re curious what the typical Chinese household does on this late-spring holiday (held on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar), you’ll love this read. The customs described are quite unlike any holidays in the West.
The dragon boat festival is held in remembrance of poet Qu Yuan’s death. Qu Yuan was a faithful servant of his emperor, but was falsely accused of being a traitor. He drowned himself in a river after several decades in exile, but the local people loved him and remember him fondly. Sounds morbid, but actually the festival is a joyous one, where dragon boats are raced on the river (to commemorate the search for Qu Yuan’s body) and 粽子 zòng zi (boiled triangular rice balls wrapped in leaves) are eaten (when he died, it’s said that 粽子 were thrown into the river to feed him in the afterlife – other stories have it that people threw 粽子 into the river to keep the fish from eating his body before they could find it).
A couple of words in this essay are not in the dictionary, and need explaining: namely 艾香. I this case, 艾香 ài xiāng means “the smell of wormwood”, and it refers to the smell produced by bouquets of wormwood (艾草) that people hang on their door during the Dragon Boat Festival to drive away bad luck.
Another word here is 雄黄酒, something that I’ve seen but never tried, and while there is an English word for this, I’ve never heard this spoken in English. 雄黄酒 is “realgar wine”, whatever the heck realgar is. If you’re curious, this article has more information on realgar wine and it’s association with the Dragon Boat Festival.
And finally, there’s 趟露水, literally “to wade in the dew”, and it refers to (what I think is a) regional custom of going out on an early morning walk and anointing one’s face with dew drops. And without further adew (har!), the Chinese title of this essay is 我家的端午节.
Click to Listen
习俗 – xí sú – Custom, local tradition
捧 – pěng – To cup in the hands
晶莹 – jīng yíng – Sparkling and translucent
露珠 – lù zhū – Dewdrop
撒 – sā – (definition 1): To let loose, to let fly
解 – jiě – To break up, divide
撒 – sǎ – (definition 2): To sprinkle
津津有味 – jīn jīn yǒu wèi – With relish, with gusto
弥漫 – mí màn – to pervade, be diffused with
香喷喷 – xiāng pēn pēn – Savory
唇膏 – chún gāo – Lipstick
绳 – shéng – Rope
今天是端午节，我们一家人五点就起床，按照习俗上山去趟露水。一路上我用双手捧起晶莹的露珠往眼睛上抹，一时间我觉得眼睛好像亮了好多。直到坐在教室读书时还觉得眼睛特别亮，什么字都能看清楚。
放学后，我撒开腿就往家里跑。刚到门口就闻到粽子香，一进门就看见爸爸做了一桌子好菜专门等我回家吃。我洗过手来到饭桌前，先给爸爸妈妈一人解了一个粽子，撒上白糖，然后给我自己解了一个漂亮的三角粽子，撒上白糖就津津有味地吃起来。饭桌上，我们一家边吃边聊，屋子里充满了端午节的快乐气氛，弥漫着香喷喷的粽子味和浓浓的艾香。
吃完饭，妈妈给我耳朵上抹了雄黄酒，给我嘴上摸了唇膏，给我手腕上戴了红线绳，把我打扮得和粽子一样香，就让我到学校去学习。
我爱吃粽子，爱过端午节，爱享受节日的欢乐气氛。
Yeah, I think the same day you were there I was actually at Longwood Gardens to get some good fall pictures. My preparation for The Storm was to get some good photographs before Sandy blew all of the leaves off the trees!
The room is spelt woom?
I remember everything my teacher told us about the Dragon boat festival. It makes me want to go to China and get a first hand experience of the festival.
I searched Realgar, and it appears to be an arsenic mineral. Growing up in China, I remember that the normal rice wine had a red waxy seal on the pottery jars. I wonder if Realgar wine is just rice wine, which each family made, and was drunk with most meals.