Grand ceremony marks opening of Dragon Boat Festival Cultural Event

By Yan Wanqin.

The opening ceremony of the 2025 Chinese Dragon Boat Festival Cultural Event was held in Zigui today. The cultural performance at the opening ceremony focused on Qu Yuan’s legacy and traditional festival customs.

Blending music, dancing, poetry recitation, folk shows and other art forms, the performance celebrated the rich heritage of the Dragon Boat Festival and invited audiences to experience its unique charm.

 

The Dragon Boat Festival, a three-day national holiday which falls on May 31 this year, has deep roots in Zigui, as it is the hometown of Qu Yuan (339 – 278 BC), the famous poet in whose honor both zongzi and the Dragon Boat Festival were created.

Centered on the theme "Our Dragon Boat Festival", the event features 11 activities running from early May through mid-June, such as dragon boat races, poetry gatherings, a philatelic exhibition and an immersive Dragon Boat customs exhibition and market.

At the ceremony, China’s State Post Bureau launched a set of special "Chu Ci" stamps to celebrate this year’s festival and the poetry of Qu Yuan.

To further promote the studies of Chu Ci, the Yichang City government donated the Chu Ci Encyclopedia to the Hubei Provincial Library, the School of Chinese Language and Literature at Wuhan University, China Three Gorges University, and Miluo City. Miluo City is a county-level city in Hunan Province, where the Mi and Luo rivers meet and become the Miluo River, where Qu Yuan committed ritual suicide by drowning himself.

Compiled by experts in Yichang, the Chu Ci Encyclopedia is a collection of  literature and historical materials related to Qu Yuan and Chu Ci in a comprehensive volume.

Lei Pengcheng contributed to this story.