Coco and John, do you know why we wrap Zongzi(rice dumpling) now?
I know, it's to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival.
Correct, do you know why we eat Zongzi for the Dragon Boat Festival?
How did the Dragon Boat Festival come about?
There are lots of stories and legends about it.
Today, I'll tell you the most famous one.
Long Long time ago, there was a famous patriotic poet Qu Yuan.
He was born into the nobility of Chu State during the Warring States Period.
Qu Yuan dedicated his whole life
to assisting the King to make the Chu stronger,
so he became the NO.1 minister of Chu at that time.
One of his key ideas was to unite the equally powerful Qi State
to resist the most powerful Qin at the time.
However, as a group of nobles were very jealous of Qu Yuan,
they often spoke ill of him in front of the King.
Finally, Qu Yuan was driven out of the capital and exiled to remote areas.
During his exile, he wrote a lot of poems to show his love towards his country,
some of which are still very famous in China.
In 278 B.C., the capital of Chu was broken through by the Qin army.
After hearing it, Qu Yuan was very sad and angry.
On the 5th day of the 5th lunar month,
he threw himself into the Miluo River and died for his country.
After hearing the sad news,
the people of Chu mourned and went to the Miluo River.
Fishermen rowed their boats and tried to salvage his body from the river.
They threw rice balls, eggs, and other food into the river,
hoping that the fish, shrimps, and crabs would eat the food
and wouldn't bite Qu Yuan's body.
An old physician poured a jar of realgar wine into the river to stun the dragon.
But unfortunately, people did not find Qu Yuan's body.
To send their condolences, people swung their boats above the river.
Later it developed into dragon boat racing.
People came up with the idea of wrapping rice with bamboo leaves
and tying them up with colored thread,
which later developed into zongzi.
On the 5th day of the 5th the lunar month of each year,
there is the custom of dragon boat racing, eating zongzi
and drinking regular wine.
People do these activities to commemorate the patriotic poet Qu Yuan.
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See u then, byebye~