DigiNepal · festivals
Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu) (端午节 (Chinese)). Region: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, diaspora. Tradition: Chinese cultural. Calendar: Chinese lunisolar (month 5 day 5). Dates: China 2026: Friday 19 June 2026 [official, source CN]; China 2027: Wednesday 9 June 2027 [official, source CN]; China 2028: Sunday 28 May 2028 [official, source CN]. History and significance: The Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month commemorates the poet and minister Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in the Miluo river around 278 BCE. Villagers are said to have raced boats to find him and thrown rice into the water to keep fish away from his body. Dragon boat races and sticky rice dumplings carry on this story. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2009. Key rituals and foods: Dragon boat races, hanging mugwort and calamus, wearing perfumed sachets; foods include zongzi sticky rice dumplings and realgar wine. Date basis: official = matches a government gazetted holiday list; computed = calculated from the calendar system (tithi astronomy with skyfield and JPL DE421, Hijri Umm al-Qura, Chinese, Korean and Hebrew calendar libraries, or the fixed rule); expected = Umm al-Qura projection pending moon sighting. Sources: Wikipedia and Wikidata (CC BY-SA, CC0) and government holiday lists, summarised in our own words.