端午節 Rice Dumpling Festival/Dragon Boat Festival

Qu Yuan was a Chinese patriotic poet who serve the emperor in Chu Kingdom in ancient China. He was a good minister and was well loved by the people. However, bad evil court officials were jealous of Qu Yuan's abilities and they successfully influenced the weak-minded emperor to dismiss and exile him.

Feeling disheartened and angry, Qu Yuan tied himself to a rock and jumped into the Mi Luo river in Hunan province in order to protest against injustice and corruption. When the people get to know of his death, they rowed their boats to the river to look for his body. When they failed to find his body, they started beating their drums and making loud noises in the river hoping to scare the fishes and sea creatures away so that they will not eat his body. Others started making rice dumplings to throw into the river believing that the sea creatures and fishes will eat their dumplings instead of Qu Yuan's body.

Since then, the 5th day of the 5th month was set as Duan Wu Jie, to remember the incident.