Dragon Boat Day 2020

端午節, the Dragon Boat Festival, was on Thursday. Duanwu is a party holiday. There are plenty of sacred and commemorative holidays, but this one is about watching boat races and eating too much. In some circles, it is also about drinking too much, but that applies to pretty much any holiday.

But Duanwu is also a commemorative holiday, where people remember the death of Qu Yuan, more or less. Qu is the grandfather of celebrity poets. While poetry existed long before he was born, he was one of the first rock stars of the poetry world. More importantly, he inspired Li Bai, who was a true superstar of the Tang Dynasty. Li really was a star. He had an encyclopedic command of literary tradition and turned it on its head, which made him wildly famous. He was also a bit of a whore and a raging alcoholic.

Today, most people don't really know all that much about Qu Yuan or Li Bai, which is a shame, but they know to eat zongzi in Qu's honor. Racing dragon boats is just something thrown in to make the day unique.

I watched my share of dragon boat races when I lived in Hong Kong. This was my first holiday in Taiwan. Unfortunately, I was too busy to go out in the blazing sun and push my way through crowds of people. I don't mind. Taiwan celebrates Duanwu almost exactly as Hong Kong. The biggest difference is that Hong Kong races are in Victoria Harbour while Taiwan races are on some of the larger rivers.

I did, however, see a team practicing last month in Taipei.