On the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, all Chinese celebrate one of their major traditional festivals, the Duanwu Festival, or Dragon Boat Festival. The highlights of their celebrations include eating zongzi, glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves in the shape of a pyramid, racing dragon boats and sticking mugwort leaves on their doors.

It is the day when Chinese people commemorate patriot-poet Qu Yuan (340 -278 BC) drowned himself in the Milo River in despair over his country's future. Hearing of his death, people who loved Qu raced in boats to recover his body from the river and threw zongzi into it to feed the fish to keep them away from his body.