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Even Google has joined in on the celebrations of the Dragon Boat Festival today by having a Google Doodle of a boat with paddlers and a drummer in front of the boat as the main drawing, and a dragon along with a figure of Qu Yuan, the poet who supposedly died, fighting for his country. The boat races came about because it is believed that Qu Yuan’s supporters jumped into their boats and raced to find his body in Milou River. To detract fish from eating up Qu Yuan’s body, these supporters threw balls of sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river, as fish feed. It is believed that the bakchang or zongzi finds its basis from this symbolic offering. How cute for a search engine to do so. In 2009, the United Nations recognised the festival of Chinese origins as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Overseas Chinese communities especially find this festival symbolic and observe this day by eating dumplings, attempting to balance eggs, warding off evil, and participating in dragon boat races. Interestingly, non-Chinese such as those in the UK have a webpage where they post everything to do with the festival. The festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, which corresponds to May or June in the Gregorian calendar. If memory serves, there’s one year in Southeast Asia when Hari Raya Aidilfitri celebrations coincided with DuanWuJie, as it is known in Mandarin.

Until then, happy eating your changs!