Dragon Boat Festival is one of three important festivals with Chinese New Year and Mid Autumn Festival. It is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. This festival is in memory of the poet, Chu Yuan. He was a public servant in 2000 years ago. He saw his country was overthrown by another country. He felt very sad, so he jumped into the river. All the people in his country respected him because he was a devoted patriot. Some people drove boats and tried to find his corpse. Some people were afraid his body was eaten by fish or shrimp so they made a lot of rice balls and threw them into the river. Fish would eat those rice balls instead of eating his body. The fifth day of the fifth lunar month was the day he committed suicide. Thus, people started to memorialize this day. Until now, when this day came, we have dragon boat race. This race is not only to memorialize the patriot Chu Yuan but also to challenge the team of cooperation. For the food, we eat sticky rice ball on this day. The sticky rice ball is made by rice, egg, mushroom, etc. and use dry bamboo leaf to pack it. Actually, different parts of Taiwan have different taste for the sticky rice ball but the purpose is same to celebrate this day.
According to the lunar calendar, summer is coming after the dragon boat festival. There are many diseases that happen in summer. In order to prevent those evils and diseases, we hang bunches of moxa, a kind of herb, on the front door. For children, they wear the fragrant bag to keep the evils and diseases away.
The last activity we usually do is to stand an egg on the floor. If we can successfully stand an egg on its end at 12 noon that means we will be lucky people in the coming year.
Therefore, dragon boat festival is one important day for us.
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