The colourful Dragon Boat Festival

You have heard or read about so many different festivals celebrated around the world. Another such colourful spectacle is the Dragon Boat Festival celebrated in the Chinese region.

The Dragon Boat Festival, or 'Duan Wu', as it's called in Chinese, is celebrated around the fifth day of the fifth month according to the traditional Chinese calendar. The festivals usually fall around late-May or early-June, and are conducted beside a river. In Hong Kong, it's known as the Tuen Ng festival.

The event celebrates the drowning suicide of China's father of poetry, Qu Yuan, who threw himself into the Mi-Lo River during the third century BC. The scramble for his body is marked with the racing of the dragon-shaped longboats, with which the festival had been observed for thousands of years.

Paddlers, urged on by drummers, battle it out for racing honours in their fishing community during this festival.

Eating 'zong yi', a food item made of glutinous(sticky) rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves to form a pyramid, is another custom associated with the festival.

People also light water lily lamps made of paper and float them in the river as part of this tradition.