Traditional Chinese festivals always have (they)symbolic foods. The Dragon Boat Festival-or Duanwu Festival-features zongzi, or sticky rice dumplings. For the Dragon Boat Festival, which (fall)on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, the core ideas are getting rid of diseases, avoiding disasters and (wish)for good health.
Wen Yiduo, poet and academic, wrote that on the fifth day of the fifth month, people threw rice dumplings into the water and raced the dragon boats activities to express their fear of the dragon below and the hope that it will not make trouble in the (day)to come.
The most (wide)known story of Duanwu Festival is that it was started (remember) Qu Yuan, committed suicide on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. People threw sticky rice dumplings into the river the dragon underwater would not eat his body.
Eating rice dumplings (be)one shared custom. There are also traditions unique to other ethnicities. For Dai people in Yunnan, for example, Duanwu Festival is an annual opportunity to express admiration to others.
