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国内英语新闻:Dragon Boat Festival observed nationwide with traditions back

2009-05-29来源:和谐英语

As part of the First Beijing Duanwu Cultural Festival that opened Thursday in Yanqing County, 220 people, all Yanqing residents, joined a competition of wrapping rice dumplings.

"The festival helps spread the traditional culture and also enriched residents' life," said Sheng Guirong, a Yanqing government public relations official.

As Chinese celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu, which fell on Thursday this year, folk customs for this event have been reviving among both the old and young in this fast developing country. To wear small bags, usually with cinnabar, medicinal herbs or aromatic materials inside, is one of the traditions.

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

FURTHER EXPLORATION

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.

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

"To set the Dragon Boat Festival is not only an adjustment of the pace of daily life, but also serves as an important way of strengthening ethnic solidarity and promoting patriotism."

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.

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

Chen Peiai, a professor of Xiamen University, said it is highly necessary to explore and spread the cultural essence of festivals.

"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.

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

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国内英语新闻:Dragon Boat Festival observed nationwide with traditions back

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