BEIJING (AP) — The Dragon Boat Festival was celebrated Friday across mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan with colorful boat races, lion dances and other festivities.The more than 2,000-year-old holiday is best known for its sporting events, but its origins are rooted in Chinese history and ancient beliefs about health, protection and harmony with nature.“The Dragon Boat Festival is probably the richest and most diverse of all traditional Chinese festivals,” said Tsinghua University’s history professor Liu Xiaofeng. “Across different regions, people developed a wide variety of traditions based on ideas connected to the summer solstice and the balance of yin and yang.”The festival is widely associated with the ancient poet Qu Yuan, who according to legend drowned himself more than 2,000 years ago. The tradition of dragon boat races was born from the story that people raced out in boats to search for the poet and threw rice into the river so fish would not eat his body.
A three-day race in Beijing features men’s, women’s and mixed dragon boat races over distances of 100, 200 and 500 meters. Teams from Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi and Guangdong will compete throughout the holiday weekend.
