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In China, from 403 B.C. to 221 B.C. in Tsu-groe state, the people were fighting. There was a famous scholar - statesman whose name was Chu-Yuan. He loved his country and the people, but his king always listened to the bad people, and didn't listen to Chu-Yuan, so he was very angry and mad and went away from the king's palace. |
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On the fifth of May on the lunar calendar he went to a big river, and he jumped into the river because he did not think he was useful any more. |
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Then, because they were afraid the fish and lobsters would eat his body, they went home and prepared rice and wrapped it in bamboo leaves. This is called 'tzung-tzu'. They took the tzung-tzu and threw it into the water for the fish and lobsters to eat, so they wouldn't eat his body. They never found Chu-Yuan's body, but every year, on the fifth of May on the lunar calendar they started to have a race to grab a flag so that they could remember what happened to Chu-Yuan. That why we want to eat tzung-tzu and have dragon boat races every year. |
We decorate the boats to look like a dragon for racing, because they are lucky. In China, the dragon is the king of the river and also it is a lucky animal. The boats during Chu-Yuan's time were for only two or three people from the village, and only the rich people had dragons on them, but now they all have a dragon, and they all have many people rowing them. I think this is because they can go faster and the dragon can bring the racers good luck. Today, a lot of people don't know the story about Chu-Yuan, but almost everybody knows about dragon boat races, because there are dragon boat races everywhere in the world.
Added to the WWW on 06/29/99
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