China’s Dragon Boat Festival takes off around the world
Boat racing, rice dumplings and a long weekend travel rush marked China’s annual Dragon Boat festival on Monday.
Celebrations were held in over 85 countries to mark the traditional Chinese festival, which fell on 18th June this year.
Dragon boat races, featuring teams of competitors paddling long and thin boats shaped like Chinese dragons, were held in China and around the world. Confucius Institutes, funded by the Chinese government to promote Chinese culture around the world, put on races across the UK, as well as elsewhere in Europe and North America.
In London, a Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival was held on 3rd June, when over 40 dragon boat teams competed for six trophies while racing on the River Thames.
Other high-profile dragon boat celebrations included a race along Uganda’s Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa. Senior officials from China and Uganda attended the ceremony to promote ties, with Ugandan vice-president Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi claiming it made Uganda the first African country to hold a dragon boat race during the festival, according to Xinhua News.
Called Duanwujie in Mandarin, Dragon Boat festival takes place on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.