On the 29 May 2017, several Chinese students from the China-EU Law School, together with two European visiting PhD students Ioana Stupariu and Katarina Durdenic, went to Yan Qing village to celebrate an extraordinary Chinese traditional holiday— the Dragon Boat Festival.

Students went to Xia Du Park to enjoy Chinese traditional folk performances such as preparing tasty rice dumplings (zongzi) and making perfume satchels. Ioana and Katarina were interested in the celebrations origin story and wanted to learn why people eat zongzi on the holiday. So He Shuang and Li Xinyue told Croatian PhD candidate Katarina and Hungarian PhD candidate Ioana the story of Qu Yuan. The Dragon Boat Festival commemorates the life and death of this famous Chinese scholar.

All students also went to watch the Dragon Boat Race. Zhou Yongping and other Chinese students explained that Qu Yuan drowned himself in Milou river. Hearing of his death, locals raced out to the river in their boats and tossed sticky rice balls into the water to keep the fish from eating his remains.

After having watched more traditional craftsmen working with lacquer, the students went to the Liu Gou Village to taste tofu specialities. PhD students said that they enjoyed the trip to Yan Qing and that they were impressed by the traditional Chinese culture.

Article by WU Tong (CESL master’s student from the 2015 intake)