Dear Richard,
May 5th of the Chinese lunar calendar year is Duan Wu Festival (端午節), also named as Dragon Boat Festival. On this day, we eat rice dumplings and go boating. Richard, do you know that behind these activities, there is a moving story of a great patriotic poet, called Qu Yuan (屈原)?
During the time of Chun Qiu (春秋, 770 B.C. to 403 B.C.), China was divided into various counties. Qu Yuan worked for the county Chu (楚). He loved the people there and helped the knight, Huai Wang (懷王), to rule the county. However, Huai Wang was not a very good leader. He wrongly believed words from others who were jealous of Qu Yuan's success and attacked Qu Yuan on purpose.
Qu Yuan was very painful when he saw the county was getting weaker and weaker, and the people life was poorer and poorer. He submitted his advices to Huai Wang numerous times but all got rejected. Qu Yuan was very disappointed. He wrote many beautiful poems to express his views.
One day, the May 5th, Qu Yuan was exhausted with ideas. He jumped into Mi Luo river (汨羅江) and committed suicide. He had left to the people a lot of good memories. People were worried that the fish in the river would eat Qu Yuan's body. They threw rice dumplings into the river and drummed on the boats to scare the fish to stay away from where Qu Yuan was. People respected Qu Yuan's patriotism and missed him forever.
With love, Dad