The dragon in a boat festival

It is a merry occasion, the dragon boat festival. And like any other national festival in any country, it involves all kinds of physical activities. Oarsmen in long sleek canoes slice their oars in cadence in the waters of the Thames in London and do so for competitive reasons, often in honor of God and country! Dragon boat paddlers do so for the rice. Yup, the rice, wrapped in green leaves, sometimes in coconut if one was further south of Shanghai. Splendid Chinese cuisine follows.

The story is of a poet who incurred the disfavor of a sovereign so he made himself scarce and when his sovereign’s kingdom was overtaken, drowns himself in the river, but the peasants who revered the poet did not wish the fish to consume his flesh, so they rowed their boats fast to find him and threw their precious rice into the water so the fish would not devour his flesh. A poignant story, senseless to the rational mind, but we are talking of just one of the stories in many history-long tradition. To question the details would be like inquiring if Adam and Eve’s offspring had incest in their concupiscence to continue the genetic line. Duh!

Festivals are what we make of it at the time of celebration, and finding an occasion to celebrate is more important than dissecting whether the chosen rationale stands to reason. Celebration is the point, and that’s what makes it all together human in my experience. Celebrations represent the discontinuous that occasions awe and wonder, full of surprises and infinite mystery. Celebration is about self-expenditure and to achieve the level of expended selfhood can only be an asset in the journey of humankind.

The Dragon Boat Festival obviously has nothing to do with dragons, the non-existent animal that tops the animal pantheon in Sino imagination. The “magic” of its observance is the double-five in the lunar calendar, the fifth day in the fifth month, so it is the Fifth of May among my students who are continually confused when we review the Gregorian names of days and months. The lunisolar calendar is best depicted with just numbers (e.g., 05-05) rather than words.

Our point is not about the facticity of any festival’s rationale or their historical beginnings. It is the festive perspective that intrigues us; it steps outside the norm and gleefully embraces the new and unexpected. To celebrate is to be open, to be open is to be free, and to be free is to be innovative and creative. That must be why in celebrations, time stops dead center and space colorfully blooms in the décor and the din of boom-booms. 

One of the things I’ve noticed that weighs down life processes in our United States is the widespread desire to be predictable. That used to be Europe’s predicament, with the royal’s incessant desire to be permanently settled, defending the status quo as long as monarchs remain on top of the social hierarchy, trickling down the leavings to the rest of the population. Russia and America are children of this aging continent, Russia of deposed cousins and Bolsheviks, and America the prodigal child of Jamestown and the Puritans. They had been fighting since to determine who takes care of grandma.

America was always heading west until it got clogged in mud in Pea Eye. Democrats in the South saw a threat to their agricultural hold from the bloody farmers and verdant fields of a newly acquired Pacific archipelago, so they lobbied to grant independence, while the Republican financiers of business expansion saw dollar bills in an oriental market and made sure they had front seat in the Chambers of Commerce, and the ear of the diplomats by Manila Bay. We tried same by the Han river and the grunts RR at Walker Hill but Mekong rowers said Khong!

We turned guardians of the fossil fuel market elbowing our way to the Middle East, lending our technology on the resource development and production ends, until ’63 when the oil producing nations cried, “Whoa!” So we became generous with our military equipment and arsenal, turning the desert and their isles into oasis of greed and royal luxuries.

Charlie Chan was the butt of our jokes until he decided to take his Dragon Boat Festival beyond its two rivers. At the mouths of the Huanghe and Chiang Jiang to the continental shelf was black gold, all within waters traditionally in China’s Nine Dash Line. But wolves in silk three-piece suits and Ivy League onionskin holders thought they were still dealing with Charlie Chan. Of China’s leaders, Mao Zedong did not think so; Deng Xiaoping made them continue to think so but acted otherwise and went on to lead the “Second Revolution” under the aegis of “Reform.” Jiang Semin gave a mindful and literary touch to his watch while Hu Jintao broadened trade but scrutinized the fine prints before signing on the dotted lines. Xi Jinping revived the pursuit of the “China Dream,” energizing the Dragon in the annual Boat Festival.

Duanwujie is the double-five. May Mi Guo’er row his boat by the lagoon shore, this day, hallelujah!