So today is ?Dragon Boat Festival,? and we have two days off to celebrate. What?s to celebrate on this traditional holiday? Why do we eat ?Zongzi? and watch dragon boat races? (?Zongzi? are rice pockets with a pork center, wrapped in bamboo leaves and tied with thin vines, and then steamed. The final package is about 8? long, and resembles a giant Australian cockroach). Well, here?s the story that I learned in school:
Long, long ago, way back in Tang Dynasty times, there was a famous poet, known and loved throughout China. One day, while wandering in the mountains, he decided to commit suicide, so he leapt from a cliff into a lake below. A local peasant farmer saw this, and immediately ran back to his village to spread the news that their favorite poet had killed himself.
When the rest of the village peasants heard this, they decided to make ?zongzi,? With ?zongzi? cooked and ready, they marched down to the lake, jumped into their fishing boats (constructed with a dragon head shaped prow) and rowed out to where the poet fell, throwing the ?zongzi? into the water so that the fish would not eat his body.
Being a very naughty student, I asked a few questions?.
1. Why would the poet commit suicide? Being a poet is pretty damned easy; write a couple lines a day, if people don?t like it, just say they?re uncultured savages who don?t understand. Being a Chinese poet is easiest of all. The language has no grammar (it was invented by westerners to try to learn Chinese), and 90% of the words rhyme. Your typical Chinese poem consists of 8 characters. One really famous poem goes like this ?stand mountain on, down look, see tree.? Write stuff like this for a living? What a racket! Considering 99.99% of the population is peasants who spend their working lives knee-deep in mud behind a water buffalo, I can?t see life as a poet would be dark and dreary enough to off oneself.
2. How did the peasant who saw the poet fall know it was suicide? The poet didn?t leave a suicide note, not that the peasants could have read it. Anyway, it probably would have been a suicide poem that mere mortals would not understand.
3. When the peasant witnessed the fall, why did he head back to the village rather than going to the aid of the poet?
4. When the villagers heard that the poet fell into the lake killing himself, why did they not immediately head off to the lake? Why did they spend half a day making ?zongzi??
5. Once they reached the spot in the lake where the poet fell, why didn?t they just fish out his body and give him a decent burial and/or cremation? Rice pockets will only feed the fish for so long, assuming the fish are able to untie the knotted vines. And do they really want rotting poet in their drinking water until the spring?
6. And least but not last, why did they name a dynasty after a refreshing powdered breakfast beverage?
Long, long ago, way back in Tang Dynasty times, there was a famous poet, known and loved throughout China. One day, while wandering in the mountains, he decided to commit suicide, so he leapt from a cliff into a lake below. A local peasant farmer saw this, and immediately ran back to his village to spread the news that their favorite poet had killed himself.
When the rest of the village peasants heard this, they decided to make ?zongzi,? With ?zongzi? cooked and ready, they marched down to the lake, jumped into their fishing boats (constructed with a dragon head shaped prow) and rowed out to where the poet fell, throwing the ?zongzi? into the water so that the fish would not eat his body.
Being a very naughty student, I asked a few questions?.
1. Why would the poet commit suicide? Being a poet is pretty damned easy; write a couple lines a day, if people don?t like it, just say they?re uncultured savages who don?t understand. Being a Chinese poet is easiest of all. The language has no grammar (it was invented by westerners to try to learn Chinese), and 90% of the words rhyme. Your typical Chinese poem consists of 8 characters. One really famous poem goes like this ?stand mountain on, down look, see tree.? Write stuff like this for a living? What a racket! Considering 99.99% of the population is peasants who spend their working lives knee-deep in mud behind a water buffalo, I can?t see life as a poet would be dark and dreary enough to off oneself.
2. How did the peasant who saw the poet fall know it was suicide? The poet didn?t leave a suicide note, not that the peasants could have read it. Anyway, it probably would have been a suicide poem that mere mortals would not understand.
3. When the peasant witnessed the fall, why did he head back to the village rather than going to the aid of the poet?
4. When the villagers heard that the poet fell into the lake killing himself, why did they not immediately head off to the lake? Why did they spend half a day making ?zongzi??
5. Once they reached the spot in the lake where the poet fell, why didn?t they just fish out his body and give him a decent burial and/or cremation? Rice pockets will only feed the fish for so long, assuming the fish are able to untie the knotted vines. And do they really want rotting poet in their drinking water until the spring?
6. And least but not last, why did they name a dynasty after a refreshing powdered breakfast beverage?
