Last week was \u7aef\u5348\u8282 (duan1wu3jie2 – Dragon Boat Festival), the holiday which \u7eaa\u5ff5 (ji4nian4 – commemorates) commemorating the passing of \u5c48\u539f (qu1yuan2 – Qu Yuan), a patriotic poet who had been \u653e\u9010 (fang4zhu2 – exiled) from his country, the kingdom of Chu.\u00a0 He is commemorated because of his loyalty to the people of his country.\u00a0 His exile is said to be due to his criticism of the existing regime.\u00a0 Unable to endure being exiled from his country, he jumped into a river to kill himself.\u00a0 One story holds that his supporters and admirers raced down the river to locate his body, while throwing \u7cbd\u5b50 (zong4zi3 – leaf-wrapped glutinous rice with fillings such as peanuts, eggs, or meat) into the river to kep fish from eating the corpse.\u00a0 To this day, the holiday is celebrated by eating \u7cbd\u5b50, and \u8d5b\u9f99\u821f (sai4long2zhou1 – dragon boat racing).\u00a0 At Hong Kong’s \u8d64\u67f1 beach, a large dragon boating tournament took place, with up to 165 entries in the mixed (men + women) event racing down the 270m course.\u00a0 This is no small amount of people, considering that boats may have 18 people in them at a time!<\/p>\n
The reason why the holiday is called \u7aef\u5348\u8282 can be understood by looking at the component characters of the name.\u00a0 \u7aef means “extreme), while \u5348 means “noon”, and \u8282 means “holiday” or “festival”.\u00a0 This is the holiday where the sun is said to be at its highest point in the sky (this is not to say that the sun is out longest as during the summer solstice).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week was \u7aef\u5348\u8282 (duan1wu3jie2 – Dragon Boat Festival), the holiday which \u7eaa\u5ff5 (ji4nian4 – commemorates) commemorating the passing of \u5c48\u539f (qu1yuan2 – Qu Yuan), a patriotic poet who had been \u653e\u9010 (fang4zhu2 – exiled) from his country, the kingdom of Chu.\u00a0 He is commemorated because of his loyalty to the people of his country.\u00a0…<\/p>\n