Dear international students,
This is to inform you that the Dragon Boat Festival (known as Duanwu by Chinese) this year will be from 22 June to 24 June, and our working time on 23 June (Friday) will be adjusted to 25 June (Sunday).
Please pay attention to your safety, be careful about use of water, electricity and gas, we wish you a nice and pleasant holiday.
IWHR Graduate School
June 21, 2023
Something about the The Dragon Boat Festival:
The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the four major traditional Chinese festivals, along with the Spring Festival, Qingming Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. It is on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar. Tasting Zongzi(a kind of traditional Chinese rice dumplings) with local variations in fillings has been a tradition in China for centuries.
The origin for this festival has many sayings, the most famous and mainstream one is that, the festival was established in remembrance of Qu Yuan, a ministerial scholar and patriotic poet of the state of Chu during the Warring States period of China.During his time(around 300 BC), Qu Yuan advocated to reform his state into a prosperous land, but got strongly opposed by the nobilitites, and was then slandered and exiled. In exile, He wrote famous and popular poems such as Li Sao, Tian Wen and Jiu Ge about his beloved state and the people. In 278 BC, army from the state of Qin broke through the capital of Chu, while Qu Yuan witnessed his motherland got wrecked and could not do anything about it. On the fifth day of the fifth month of that Chinese lunar year, after writing his last work "Huai Sha", he dived into the Miluo River and committed suicide.
Shortly after his dive, the local people heard about it and immediately rowed the boats attempting to save him, but could not even found his body. They then spontaneously threw food such as rice puddings into the river to distract and feed the fish away to preserve Qu Yuan. As time went by, it gradually developed into the custom of dragon boat races and the tasting of Zongzi.