Celebrating Harmony and Virtue: The Dragon Boat Festival

“Dragon Boat Festival Performance,” Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). From the fierce rowers of the dragon boats to the excited sea of onlookers, this piece captures the joy and prosperity the Duanwu festival brings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wrapped in bamboo leaves, the pyramid-shaped sticky rice dumpling, or the so-called Zongzi in Chinese, opens people’s imagination to Duanwu, commonly referred to as the Dragon Boat Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday marked as the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. 

Having an intangible cultural heritage, Duanwu can chase some of its traditions back as far as the Xia Dynasty circa 2000 B.C. With every emerging new dynasty, the culture of Duanwu incorporated more depth and virtue, in the forms of historical records and folktales. 

Inside the Palace 

Duanwu arrives before the intense wave of summer heat. On this day, emperors from dynasties past would bestow new suits on the courtiers to accommodate the changing weather. Captured in a poem by the poet Du Fu, the custom-made suit carried a “delightful fragrance”; its fabric was “as soft as a breeze, and as light as a snowflake.” He expresses sheer joy for the impeccable quality and the consideration put into his gift, as it bears the benevolence of the emperor.