Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Duan Wu Jie

For those who may not be aware of this historical background, the story goes like this.........

 

This festival honours a patriotic poet and loyal official named Qu Yuan. His death is commemorated each year on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Lunar calendar, usually in June by the Dragon boat and Dumpling Festival.

According to ancient legend, Qu Yuan was a loyal court official in the court of the Chu Kingdom in old China, he was extremely capable and many of the other court officials were jealous of him, they plotted against him and he was dismissed from court.

Over the next 20 years, the Chu kingdom got weaker, he was very sad that his beloved country was invaded by another country, the Qin Kingdom and that the people were suffering a lot of hardships.

Feeling depressed that his country had come to such a state of destruction, the wise and honest Qu Yuan threw himself into the Ni Luo River and drowned in protest against corruption and injustice.

Qu Yuan was greatly respected by the people because of his love for his country and its people.
 
When they learnt of his death, they set out boats to look for his body. The fishermen furiously beat drums, gongs and cymbals in their desperate attempt to scare away the fishes. They beat the waters furiously with their paddles and threw rice wrapped in bamboo leaves (rice dumplings) into the river for the fishes and other sea creatures to feed on instead of devouring their hero's body.

Thus the Pyramid shaped dumplings made of glutinous rice known as Rice Dumplings (Zong Zi) are eaten to mark the festival and the legend of local fishermen racing out to save Qu Yuan is re-enacted in the form of Dragon Boat Races along the rivers and coasts as what we see today.

Zongzi

Today (5 May of the lunar calendar) is the Dumpling Festival or Duan Vu Jie. Some even call it the Zongzi Festival or Dragon Boat Festival. For the first time, I received an sms greeting from a friend in KL especially for this occasion. This evening at about 3pm, another called to ask whether I am working half day in view of this festival. Anyway, our office worked as usual.


Somehow, I have the impression that this occasion Zong Festival is getting more and more "celebrated" or rather more and more commercialised.

My parents had in the past had family reunion dinner in four occasions yearly. CNY, Dumpling Festival, Moon Cake Festival and the Winter Solstice. These days, this is cut down to three with the Moon Cake Festival not in the list.

I used to wonder what exemplary deeds that this chap Qu Yuan had done in old China that Chinese all over the world (at least in Chinese-majority areas) still continue to commemorate this occasion till today. Didn't Confucius do more for the Chinese civilisation to deserve similar degree of remembrance?


As I see it, the simple fact is that no special food item was created to maintain the memory of Confucius like Zongzi for Qu Yuan and moon cake for the rebellion against the Yuan Dynasty.


As always for the Chinese and for that matter for most people, it is food that is more important than whatever great deeds that one has accomplished!


Of course, there is an exception, the lasting impact of Jesus somehow is not related to any particular food !