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"The festival helps spread the traditional culture and also enriched residents' life," said Sheng Guirong, a Yanqing government public relations official.
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Players on the dragon boats splash water to each other at Nan'ao of Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, May 28, 2009. A dragon boat race was held here to celebrate the Chinese traditional Duanwu Festival, also known as the Dragon Boat Festival, with 12 teams attending |
At the end of 2007, China rescheduled its national holidays, adding three traditional Chinese festivals, including the "Tomb-Sweeping Day," "Dragon Boat Festival" and "Mid-Autumn Festival," as legal holidays. The move, in response to public calls, has been believed helpful to revive traditional culture in the modernizing nation.
"It is a proper time to restore the traditional festivals and let them go into our modernized life," said Chen Jianxian, a China Folklore Society member.
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A student who studies Chinese national culture attends a commemorative ceremony for Qu Yuan, the venerable patriotic poet of the Chu State in the Warring States Period (476 - 221 BC), in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, May 28, 2009 |
The dragon boat racing has developed into an international competition sport, he added. Dragon boat race will be a new competition at the 2010 Asian Games to be held in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province.
But Chen feared that like other festivals, the practical function and religious content of the Dragon Boat Festival may reduce while functions of commemoration and amusement will get big development.
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Two foreign children learn making Zongzi, a cone-shaped food with glutinous rice stuffed with assorted tasty fillings wrapped in fresh bamboo or reed leaves to be cooked by steaming or boiling, as the foreign experts and their family members were invited to a gathering with their Chinese counterparts to spend a happy Duanwu, or Dragon Boat Festival, at campus of Tianjin Normal University in Tianjin, north China, May 27, 2009 |
"We should not simply regard the three newly added national festivals as ordinary ones. Rather we should pay more attention to their historical and culture values," the professor said.
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Actors perform traditional dance during the opening ceremony of a culture festival in Jiaxing, east China's Zhejiang Province, May 26, 2009, to celebrate the Chinese traditional Duanwu Festival which falls on May 28 this year. A culture festival with the theme of Duanwu folk custom was held here from May 26 to 30 in the city |