Dragon Boat Festival 龍舟慶端午

Lunar Calendar May 5, which was June 16 this year, was Dragon Boat Festival.

In Chinese tradition, we eat zong-zi, peaches, and  watch dragon boat races on Dragon Boat Festival, and we did on that day. According to lunar calendar, the day and days after dragon boat festival will be hot. And it was really hot, till now. Dragon Boat Festival in Taiwan has always been one of the important festivals. The goverment held boat races every year to celebrate the day.

This year, the Suzhou city goverment picked the tradtion back and had a boat race at Gold Chicken Lake. So we had the luck to watch the boat races.  

 The most interesting thing in the race was to see one of the dragon boat turn up side down and every rower fall to the water. It was so much fun to witness the "boatwreck".

 翻船 Boatwreck

 The crowd

 

Zong-Zi

非常端午 Stand Bike

 

以前的人習惯在端午节以艾草沐浴、抹雄黄酒以避邪，我想是有道理的，这个节氣正直季节交换，氣候湿热，百花齐放，杂草邪氣叢生。

我就是没做好防範的受害者之一，也不知为何，最近常常眼下脸部肿胀（红痒刺痛），疑是花粉过敏，还是风吹日照（但我很少出门），也可能是糯米竹叶过敏（才吃一个就..），总之，今年的第一次在苏州的端午节，很特别。

端午节当日近午时，我们带着Winston到楼下练习骑脚踏车，很奇怪，他一下子就能放手了，從買车至今练了五次，都需要人扶，突然可以自己平衡，对运动细胞不是太好的他，算是近步神速，我们不得不联想

到端午立蛋的習俗，原来端午的正午是地心引力最强也是立脚踏车的最佳时机，下一次的端午，我打算练倒立，讓地心引力将我的脸部皱纹上提。

 

Many discuss about why there is a tradition to stand eggs at noon, on Dragon Boat Festival.  That afternoon, instead of standing eggs, we let Wisnton ride on the bike to "Stand his bike". As Wisnton learned how to ride on the bike all by himself the first time.  We proved that the gravitation was strongest that afternoon.

 

 

Dragon Boat Festival 粽子来啦！

Some call it Dragon Boat Festival, some say Zong-Zi Festival, and in Taiwan we call it Duan-Wu Festival.  The day was to memorize one great man Qu-Yuan in old time. He commited suicide in a lake as a way to protest justice. People threw rice-wrapped by bamboo leaves to feed fish and keep fish away from eating Qu-Yuan's body.  For more information click here: Duan-Wu festival.  Nowadays, many people eat Zong-Zi but do not know the story.  Many young people do not make Zong-Zi now, because Zong-Zi are availabe in supermarket any time of the year.  I still like to eat Zong-Zi at this special day to keep the tradition so Winston will remember it when he grows up.

 

As I had posted earlier, it was not easy to find all related materials for making Zong-Zi in Su-Zhou.  Someone told me that I may find the materials at traditional market in Old Town District. But "traditional market" and "Old town" seemed so unfamiliar.  So I just used what I had to make Zong-Zi.  The string I used to tie Zong-Zi was my cotton ball used to knead a shirt which is still in process.  

Here are the materials and the Finished Goods.  They looked fine but the taste would again depend on what month they feed.

 

 

 

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!