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Keeping festival traditions afloat
June 2, 2011, Thursday
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WHILE many traditions related to the Dragon Boat Festival are disappearing, Shi Xiaohan learns how a local dragon boat race is being revitalized with inspiration from a British sporting institution and a customary festival food is being given gender-specific roles again.
Dragon boat races and eating zongzi are the two most popular traditions of the Dragon Boat Festival throughout China. In Hangzhou, innovations have been made on both the traditions this year, reminding people of the good old times in creative ways.
Dragon boat race in Xixi National Wetland Park has a history of about 500 years. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the local official Hong Zhong made the event an annual carnival. For the sparsely populated water village, the carnival became an important gathering to pray for harvest and peace in the whole community.
With its complicated knitting of watercourses, Xixi Wetland is not the ideal place for dragon boat racing as the creeks are quite narrow. The emphasis of the race has been put on team spirit and the interaction between the crews and spectators. With its team spirit and interactive form, the dragon boat carnival in Xixi Wetland became a national intangible cultural heritage in 2008.
The task of passing on this valueless heritage has long troubled the organizers. This year, they decided to imitate the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, inviting China's top universities to join the carnival on the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on Monday this year.
Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University and Zhejiang University will compete in the race on Monday.
As the home team in Hangzhou, Zhejiang University's dragon boat team was formed recently and is practicing hard in a bid to make an impressive debut. The team invited top experts in the province to teach rowing techniques and teamwork coordination.
A total of 25 students, divided into two teams, have been preparing for the event since mid May, training for 16 hours per week. But only one team could enter the final race.
"Only about five of us are experienced in boating, so we need a lot more training to be able to coordinate as a team," said Zhang Chenying, a team member.
"The drummer sets the pace and the whole crew has to shout together to keep it up. We can be quite loud and excited during training, so other students, professors and even neighboring residents are often attracted to watching us," Zhang said.
Zongzi, the traditional food of the Dragon Boat Festival, are made of glutinous rice stuffed with various fillings and wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. Nowadays, zongzi has become an ordinary snack for all-year consumption, with its original intention, memorizing the beloved poet Qu Yuan, gradually fading away.
But in Tangqi, a watertown of Hangzhou, zongzi actually has more meaning attached. By using different shapes and stuffings, zongzi was once used to start a relationship, make a proposal and mark a marriage. This year, the tradition has been reintroduced to the public to remind people of the traditional ways of tying the knot.
Shen Jianbiao, a Tangqi local who tries to keep the tradition alive, explains how gender-specific zongzi work.
"Young people in the past were quite conservative and didn't have many opportunities to meet with each other, not to mention freely go on a date. So during the village gathering once a year, people would bring 'gendered' zongzi to look for his or her partner," he said.
Young women would bring four angular zongzi stuffed with red beans representing missing sentiments while men would bring triangular zongzi stuffed with lotus root representing honesty. During the event, they would give their zongzi to the people they were fond of. If two people exchanged their zongzi, they would start a relationship.
If a man wanted to propose, he would send a dozen male zongzi again to the woman's family. If the woman's family agreed, they would send female zongzi stuffed with meat to the man's family. The meat represented that the woman's family were ready to send their dearest daughter to the man.
Finally, after the couple were married, they would present pairs of zongzi to the whole village with the female zongzi stuffed with dates. Date, pronounced as zao in Mandarin, is literally translated as "soon," meaning the couple wished to have a baby soon.
With changing social customs, the tradition of using zongzi as a matchmaker disappeared some 30 years ago.
However, in Tangqi, people still keep the tradition of making zongzi of both shapes and filled with various stuffings. The newly reintroduced traditions behind zongzi are bound to attract more Hangzhou locals to this seemingly ordinary food.
Dragon boat races and eating zongzi are the two most popular traditions of the Dragon Boat Festival throughout China. In Hangzhou, innovations have been made on both the traditions this year, reminding people of the good old times in creative ways.
Dragon boat race in Xixi National Wetland Park has a history of about 500 years. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the local official Hong Zhong made the event an annual carnival. For the sparsely populated water village, the carnival became an important gathering to pray for harvest and peace in the whole community.
With its complicated knitting of watercourses, Xixi Wetland is not the ideal place for dragon boat racing as the creeks are quite narrow. The emphasis of the race has been put on team spirit and the interaction between the crews and spectators. With its team spirit and interactive form, the dragon boat carnival in Xixi Wetland became a national intangible cultural heritage in 2008.
The task of passing on this valueless heritage has long troubled the organizers. This year, they decided to imitate the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, inviting China's top universities to join the carnival on the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on Monday this year.
Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University and Zhejiang University will compete in the race on Monday.
As the home team in Hangzhou, Zhejiang University's dragon boat team was formed recently and is practicing hard in a bid to make an impressive debut. The team invited top experts in the province to teach rowing techniques and teamwork coordination.
A total of 25 students, divided into two teams, have been preparing for the event since mid May, training for 16 hours per week. But only one team could enter the final race.
"Only about five of us are experienced in boating, so we need a lot more training to be able to coordinate as a team," said Zhang Chenying, a team member.
"The drummer sets the pace and the whole crew has to shout together to keep it up. We can be quite loud and excited during training, so other students, professors and even neighboring residents are often attracted to watching us," Zhang said.
Zongzi, the traditional food of the Dragon Boat Festival, are made of glutinous rice stuffed with various fillings and wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. Nowadays, zongzi has become an ordinary snack for all-year consumption, with its original intention, memorizing the beloved poet Qu Yuan, gradually fading away.
But in Tangqi, a watertown of Hangzhou, zongzi actually has more meaning attached. By using different shapes and stuffings, zongzi was once used to start a relationship, make a proposal and mark a marriage. This year, the tradition has been reintroduced to the public to remind people of the traditional ways of tying the knot.
Shen Jianbiao, a Tangqi local who tries to keep the tradition alive, explains how gender-specific zongzi work.
"Young people in the past were quite conservative and didn't have many opportunities to meet with each other, not to mention freely go on a date. So during the village gathering once a year, people would bring 'gendered' zongzi to look for his or her partner," he said.
Young women would bring four angular zongzi stuffed with red beans representing missing sentiments while men would bring triangular zongzi stuffed with lotus root representing honesty. During the event, they would give their zongzi to the people they were fond of. If two people exchanged their zongzi, they would start a relationship.
If a man wanted to propose, he would send a dozen male zongzi again to the woman's family. If the woman's family agreed, they would send female zongzi stuffed with meat to the man's family. The meat represented that the woman's family were ready to send their dearest daughter to the man.
Finally, after the couple were married, they would present pairs of zongzi to the whole village with the female zongzi stuffed with dates. Date, pronounced as zao in Mandarin, is literally translated as "soon," meaning the couple wished to have a baby soon.
With changing social customs, the tradition of using zongzi as a matchmaker disappeared some 30 years ago.
However, in Tangqi, people still keep the tradition of making zongzi of both shapes and filled with various stuffings. The newly reintroduced traditions behind zongzi are bound to attract more Hangzhou locals to this seemingly ordinary food.
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