Festival remembers clean, honest official

Tony Ryanto, Contributor, Jakarta

The Double Fifth Day, known through the West as the Dragon Boat Festival day, is another significant lunar holiday for the Chinese around the world, as it serves to commemorate the grim crusade against corruption and ineffectual government. This year, it fell June 22.

On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, a great patriot poet Qu Yuan (c. 340-278 BC), a formerly high-ranking official at the Kingdom of Chu, drowned himself in the Mi Lou river after he learned about his country's downfall at the hands of another powerful state, the Qin.

The kingdom of Chu was situated around the present-day Hunan and Hubei provinces and China was in the middle of the warring state period (475-221 BC) with feudal lords trying to carve out their own kingdoms.

Qu Yuan was known as an upright, learned and loyal and was highly esteemed for his wise counsel that had brought peace and prosperity to the kingdom. He advised the king to avoid conflict with the Qin kingdom but his appeal was rejected.

Also recognized for his determination to fight corrupt officials, including a prince, he angered others who also had access to the emperor. The latter group put pressure to the monarch to have the poet removed from service. Qu Yuan was eventually dismissed and banished.

Qu Yuan did not give up. He traveled extensively, taught and put his ideas into writing. Three of his works -- The Nine Chapters (Jiu Zhang), The Lament (Li Sao) and Asking the Heaven (Wen Tian) -- have become masterpieces, invaluable for those studying ancient Chinese culture.

The state of Qin emerged as the invincible power and unified all of China under one rule for the first time in history.

With grief, Qu Yuan saw the gradual decline of the Chu state, his mother country. Despair and frustration led him to suicide -- and he leapt into the river.

Upon learning of their beloved poet's death, his followers were terribly dismayed. Fishermen raced to the spot in their long boats, beating drums to scare the fish away and throwing zongzi (rice dumplings) into the water to feed the fish so they would not consume Qu Yuan's body.

This effort did not bring Qu Yuan back to life but the day of his death is faithfully observed until today. The Double Fifth Day (Duan Wu Jie in Chinese) is known as Peh Chun in Indonesia.

Zongzi is the most popular food of the festival. It is now also called ba cang in Indonesia. While ba stands for pork, those dumplings sold in Indonesia often use chicken filling, making them halal for Muslims.

The dumpling is made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves and is pyramidal in shape. Fresh bamboo leaves are the best since their taste and smell are an integral part of zongzi.

Today, zongzi are sold in different shapes and with a variety of fillings, including beans, chestnuts, meat, lotus seeds and the yolk of salted eggs.

In Indonesia, zongzi are generally filled with meat and without egg yolks or beans, seeds or chestnuts -- and are rather sweet in taste, unlike the slightly saltier ones in Singapore and Malaysia.

Along with rice dumplings, people often eat rice pudding on Double Fifth Day, which symbolizes an offering to Qu Yuan. Called kwee chang in Indonesia, these puddings are wrapped in bamboo leaves, bound with a sort of raffia and boiled in salt water for hours. The pudding is consumed with home-made colorless syrup.

The Dragon Boat race represents the attempt to rescue and recover the body of Qu Yuan. A dragon boat ranges from 15 to 30 meters in length with a beam of about 1.5 meters, accommodating two paddlers sitting side by side.

A wooden open-mouthed dragon is attached at the bow and a dragon tail at the stern. The hull is decorated with a design of red, green and blue scales edged in gold. In the center of the boat is a canopied shrine.

Behind the shrine sit drummers, gong beaters, and cymbal crashers who set the pace for the paddlers.

Before a boat enters competition, it must be "brought to life" by painting dragon eyes on it in a scared ceremony. Men stand at the bow setting off firecrackers and tossing rice into the water to make believe they are looking for Qu Yuan.

The winner is the first team that grabs the flag marking the end of the course.

All the noise and pageantry creates an atmosphere of gaiety and excitement for participants and spectators. Competitions are held between different clans, villages and organizations and winners are awarded medals, banners, jugs of wine and festive meals.

Annual races are held all over China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and other countries, such as Canada and Australia where there are significant Chinese communities.

According to another account, the Dragon Boat festival symbolizes a real dragon fight to the heavens to bring on rain.

Legend has it that the fifth month comes after the spring planting season, when people had more time to relax but still needed rain for their crops. Another story has it that the fifth month is generally considered an evil month and is considered a particularly bad day.

Thus, the celebration also served as a time to ward off evil and disease for the rest of the year. Fighting evil might mean hanging healthy herbs on the front door, drinking nutritious concoctions or displaying portraits of Chung Kuei or Zhong Kui, guardians against evil spirits.

Adults drink Xiong Huang wine and children carry fragrant silk pouches, all of which can prevent evil.

It is said that if you can balance a raw egg on its end at exactly noon on Double Fifth Day, you will be free from evil for the rest of the year.