the Dragon Boat Festival

This is the first post here. I wanted to find an English website to start my English blog writing. To be honest, I'd like to try blogspot. But, well, obviously, it's a bit hard to see my own blog in China. So even I know some ways to see it, it's still not convenient, right? I tried Jimdo, But it didn't send me the email to confirm for a long time. I've no idea about blog.com. But it looks clean and simple. Anyway, I just need another blog and I believe that the contents are more important. Furthermore, it is a good way to practice my English.

The world is so miraculous that blog.com was blocked by ***, and blogspot is fine now. I spent half a day to use blog.com for my first post, and finaly found that it cannot be read. I have nothing to say about the hamonous sociaty.

For this Sunday is the Dragon Boat Festival (Duan Wu), I decided to write about this meaningful festival. I feel confused when the first time I heard the strange English name. Actually, this festival has multi-meaning.

The first thing in my mind is eating Zongzi(glutinous rice wrapped to form a pyramid or rectangle shape using bamboo or reed leaves). Every year Mum and Dad will buy a lot at home. I'll like them at first a few days, but then I'll lose my appetite of it for eating in several weeks' breakfast. My favorite flavor is meat plus egg yolk. It's a specific food for the Dragon Boat Festival; however we can find it anywhere and anytime as a snack. We eat Zongzi for maybe thousands of years to memorize a hero, Qu Yuan. I feel embarrassed that I'm not familiar his story now, but I did use to. I know he leapt a river on the fifth day of the fifth month. We threw rice to the river to feed his ghost every year this time.

Another main activity is the dragon-boat races. It should be fun. But I've never participate it yet. The game will be including the Olympics this year. I'd love to watch it. (I think we're too concertrate on the prize. I bet it's not the Olympics' spirit.) It has the symbolism also related to Qu. We row the dragon boat to attempt to rescue his body. The reason why we use the dragon shape is only dragon can freak out other dragons. There are many dragons in the river or in the imagination of our ancestor's mind. Well, it's not a competition before. They just getherd to raw the boat for fun or see how distance can we row. That seems more like Olympics' spirit.

There is an interesting idiom about the dragon boat painting. There is a famous painter long long ago. He painted a large dragon. When he almost finished, he painted the eyes of the dragon. Because the painting is so vivid that it became alive. And then the dragon flied away. That's why we always draw the eyes in the end. The idiom "hua long dian jing" means the last thing you did make the whole thing perfect.

I watched the Culture Matter which is a TV show of ICS last night. It talked about the Dragon Boat Festival. And it reminds me an old TV series the Whirt Snake Lady. I'm not sure the translating is correct or not, but it literally means that. The story is an classical Chinese fairy tale. It's a romantic and tragic story like Romeo and Juliet. There was a snake long ago. And she can change her image to a beautiful girl(it's hard to translate how she can do that. I just can tell you that it's related to Taoism). One day she met a young scholar in Hangzhou neaer Xi Lake. Of course both of them fell in love with each other. But, it was raining suddenly. The scholar lent his umbrella to the young lady. And she gave it back one year later. Then they got together. It was dramatically that a monk who interfered their happy life. The monk is bad, I think. But he is not considered too bad because he just did what he should do. But still he is an indifferent man. He captured the snake girl and poisoned her under the Leifeng Tower after she just gave birth to her little baby even through the scholar knew the tuth of his wife and accepted that. Then the snake's sister came to rescue her and used magic to make the whole water of Xi Lake cover the Jinshan Temple where the monk lived. Lots of ppl died. I just realize that I forgot the ending of the story. I guess that the scholar became a monk in Jinshan Temple and the snake lady would be under the Leifeng tower for many years.

Then I need to express that why I tell the story. In the Dragon Boat Festival, everyone must drink a little bit orpiment(a kind of herb). Mum will use it to write a character-王 on children's forehead which means king. The herb contained poison. We just use it at that day to clean our skin and get rid of evil. So it'll let the snake girl turn to her original shape. She could not help to reject and you can guess what happened next. She fell to sleep in the bed and turned. Then the scholar saw it and died because of shock. The snake felt sorry and went to the hell and rescued the spirit of the scholar. He was alive. Drinking orpiment is another tradition.

There are several activities in the festival. The dragon boat is one of them. We have the festival in the beginning of summer. And that's the time that many dangerous animals and insects appeared. So it's also something that we do for our health. We can not forget our culture that is so rich, amazing and helpful. This year the dragon boat festival becomes a real holiday. Whatever I'll eat Zongzi tomorrow.