This year the Duanwu Festival (端午节 Duānwǔ jié), or Dragon Boat Festival (龙舟节 Lóngzhōu jié) as widely known outside of China, falls on Monday 10th June 2024.
To honor this traditional celebration, our Chinese@Queen’s Blog editor, Lauren McShane (梅谢兰), has crafted a sachet of herbs (香囊 xiāngnáng). According to Duanwu customs, these sachets are believed to ward off diseases and insects that become prevalent during the 5th month of the lunar calendar.
Lauren extends her best wishes for good health to everyone and invites you to join in the festivities. To help you immerse yourself in the spirit of the festival, she has prepared special worksheets adapted from the internet. These worksheets are available for download and printing from the links below. Alternatively, you can pick up a copy at the McClay Library (Student Lounge).
On Friday 14th June there will be two Chinese Culture talks delivered by Wenyuan Pu, visiting scholar to Queen’s, and Yanglu Wang, PhD researcher from School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, on the respective topics below. All welcome!
Click here to visit the event page.Click here to visit the event page.
Let’s celebrate the Duanwu Festival together and embrace the rich traditions that come with it.
Wish you all a happy and healthy Duanwu Festival! 端午节安康、快乐 (Duānwǔ jié ānkāng kuàilè)！
How did you celebrate the Festival? Feel free to share your story with us in the comment box below!
The Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu Festival (端午节 Duānwǔ jié), is a traditional Chinese festival with a history of over 2000 years. It occurs on the 5th day of the 5th month in Chinese lunar calendar, which falls on Friday 3rd June this year.
Duanwu Festival is widely known as Dragon Boat Festival (龙舟节 Lóngzhōu jié) to the rest of the world, as one of its celebrative events – dragon boat racing – has become so popular (受欢迎 shòu huānyíng) in the world.
Today, we would like to invite Dr YAO Xudan (姚旭丹) to introduce dragon boat racing and share with us her interesting experiences of joining in races when she was in Belfast and more recently in Manchester.
Image@LiangWANG
YAO Xudan (姚旭丹) studied her PhD in Queen’s University Belfast from 2014 to 2018. Afterwards, she joined the National Graphene Institute, University of Manchester, as a postdoctoral research associate. Currently, she is continuing her research in Queen Mary College, University of London.
Dragon Boat Racing in Belfast
When I was doing my PhD at Queen’s, I joined dragon boat racing as a paddler twice in 2015 and 2016, as a member of Team QUB, which were organised by Chinese Welfare Association NI. People from different professional backgrounds, including universities, associations, boat clubs, etc., signed up for the events with full enthusiasm. Chinese food was prepared and supplied to all participants. Although we did not win in the end, everyone enjoyed the teamwork spirit (团队精神 tuánduì jīngshén) during racing, despite the bad weather. My colleagues from Spain and India were so excited that they wanted very much to follow up celebrations as such in the future. I believe that our traditional culture (传统文化 chuántǒng wénhuà) could be shared and accepted widely in this engaging way.
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Race 2015 | Image@LiangWang
Dragon Boat Racing in Manchester
On 29th May 2022, the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival was held in Manchester, with 36 teams from universities, companies and institutions participating in the competition. With my previous experience of Belfast races I joined one of the University of Manchester teams, which was formed by all girls. The morning was a bit wet but fortunately it became sunny during the race. Again, although we could not enter into the final competition (决赛 juésài), we were satisfied with our great team performance and enjoyed ourselves. Apart from the racing, the festival also included Chinese kung fu performance (功夫表演 gōngfu biǎoyǎn), singing (唱歌 chànggē), dancing (跳舞 tiàowǔ) and tasting (品尝 pǐncháng) traditional Chinese food such as zongzi (粽子 zòngzi), baozi (包子 bāozi), marinated eggs (卤蛋 lǔdàn), making it an exciting and fun experience.
Dragon Boat Race in Manchester | Image@XudanYao
Dragon Boat Race in Manchester | Image@XudanYao
Dragon Boat Race in Manchester | Image@XudanYao
Dragon Boat Race in Manchester | Image@XudanYao
Dragon Boat Race in Manchester | Image@XudanYao
Overall, dragon boat racing is really one of the wonderful occasions for people to get together and celebrate our traditional festival, as well as to enhance intercultural communication and understanding between people of different communities.
About dragon boatracing
Dragon boats are human-powered watercrafts originally made of wood, and in modern times upgraded into carbon or glass fibre composites, as well as other lightweight materials. They are universally decorated with a Chinese dragon head and tail. For racing, a standard dragon boat typically consists of 20 paddlers, one drummer facing toward the paddlers, and one steerer. However, there are also small boats with a capacity of 10 paddlers.
Image@XudanYao
Author: YAO Xudan Editors: Martin Duffy and WANG Liang
Have you joined any boat racing events before? You are very welcome to share your experience by using the comment box below.
More to read
Here are posts about our past celebrations of Dragon Boat Festival, if you are interested in getting to know more about our celebrations at Queen’s.
After a 3 year absence the 16th annual Queen’s University Belfast Boat Race will take place next month, with Queen’s men and women rowers taking on Trinity College Dublin on Saturday 11 June 2022. As well as the main event there will also be junior races involving local schools racing over the 2km course.
The Duanwu (Dragon Boat) Festival falls on June 14 this year.
Duanwu Festival, 端午节 (Duānwǔ jié) in Chinese, is also widely known as Dragon Boat Festival 龙舟节 (Lóngzhōu jié) in the rest of the world, as one of its celebrative events – dragon boat race – has become so popular in the world. However, like last year due to pandemic lockdown in the UK, we are still unable to watch dragon boat races or to have cultural workshops on campus.
The head of a dragon boat in River Lagan. Image@LiangWANG
If you would like to review how we celebrated it in the past, here are some snapshots with links to full albums (via the Language Centre Facebook).
This time, while we cannot get together again, we have invited some staff and students to show and tell what they have done to celebrate the festival – making and eating zongzi 粽子(zòngzi), a typical type of food made of glutinous rice with sweet (e.g. dates, red bean paste) or savoury (e.g. pork, salted egg yolk) fillings wrapped up by bamboo or reed leaves, as the photos shown below.
Zongzi making – reed or bamboo leaves. Image@SharonFAN
Zongzi making – materials preparation. Image@YuZHAO
Zongzi making – wrapping up. Image@XinzhuPANG
Zongzi – wrapped and to be boiled. Image@LiangWANG
Zongzi – boiled in a rice cooker. Image@ChenZHANG
Zongzi – boiled and served in a plate. Image@XinzhuPANG
Zongzi – one unwrapped and ready to eat. Image@YuZHAO
Zongzi – wrapped up with dates as stuffing. Image@MengTAN
Zongzi – unwrapped and served with a plate. Image@XinzhuPANG
Zongzi – unwrapped and served with a bowl. Image@ChenZHANG
Zongzi – unwrapped and served in a bowl. Image@MengTAN
Zongzi – sweet taste with sugar. Image@SharonFAN
Zongzi – savoury taste with pork. Image@SharonFAN
Zongzi – savoury taste with pork and salted egg yolk, unwrapped and halved. Image@XinzhuPANG
Zongzi – served in a plate with decoration. Image@SharonFAN
In addition to the common festival greeting that you may say 快乐 kuàilè (happy), many Chinese people also choose to say 安康 ānkāng (peaceful and healthy) or 吉祥 jíxiáng (auspicious). This is because Duanwu Festival is considered having its origin from warding off diseases and illness mostly caused by the rising summer heat and humidity which invited the invasion of poisonous animals such as insects and reptiles. Therefore, you will be able to see people use a varied way of expressions:
端午节快乐！Duānwǔ jié kuàilè! – Happy Duanwu Festival!
端午节安康！Duānwǔ jié ānkāng! – Wish you a peaceful and healthy Duanwu Festival!
端午节吉祥！Duānwǔ jié jíxiáng! – Wish you an auspicious Duanwu Festival!
However, outside overseas Chinese communities, if dragon boat races are the only form of celebrations, i.e. beyond the context of traditional Chinese Duanwu culture, then people would find it normal to just express a happy festive greeting.
