Celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month of every year, the Dragon Boat Festival (端午节-DuanWu Jie) is one of the country’s oldest festivals, dating back some 2300 years. According to legend, the festival celebrates the patriot, poet and exiled minister Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in grief when his home state of Chu was invaded.
Thousands of years later, people continue to celebrate the holiday by racing dragon boats and eating zongzi, which are a type of rice dumpling originally thrown into the river to keep fish away from Qu’s body.
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| Won't miss that too much! |
So for the second year, Dragon Boat Festival is a national day off. This year it falls on a Thursday and in order for people to have a 3-day off vacation they will have to work on Sunday (to recuperate the lost day of work on Friday) hence working the following week 6 days in a row (Sunday to Friday)… better get some beauty sleep on your vacation.
