Dragon Boat Festival – one of the three most important Chinese Holidays, together with Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival – falls on the 2 June (the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar).
Also known as the Double Fifth or Duanwu festival, the event commemorates the death of Chinese poet, Qu Yuan, who lept into the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 B.C with a stone attached to his ankle.
Local people admired the poet so deeply that they took to the water to save him, in their boats. Unable to located Qu Yuan’s body, the Chinese dropped balls of sticky rice into the water so that the fish could eat the rice rather than the poet’s body.
Today Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by tucking into zongzi (sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves) and racing dragon boats.
Wondering where to celebrate Dragon Boat Festival in the capital? Panic not. Haute Time has done the hard work for you. Here’s the low-down on five of the best Chinese restaurants in town…
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