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Taipei ready for Dragon Boat Festival

The Chuyuan Temple dragon boat racing team from Beitou practices yesterday. The Dragon Boat Festival will be held from Sunday through June 19. PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES

Ringing a bell and daubing red paint on the eyes of dragon boats, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday presided over the eye-painting ceremony at Keelung River to raise the curtain on the Dragon Boat Festival that starts next Sunday.

The eye-painting ceremony is a ritual to "open the eyes" and bring the dragon boats to life before the annual Taipei International Dragon Boat Race, which this year will feature 125 dragon boat teams from around the world. The event, which will be held at Dajia Riverside Park (大佳河濱公園), ends on June 19.

Addressing the ceremony, Hau said that aside from enjoying the exciting dragon boat races, Taipei residents should learn more about traditional holidays.

"The Dragon Boat Festival provides a great chance for us to have fun with our families and to understand the meaning of traditional holidays," he said.

Before presiding over the ceremony, Hau and more than 100 parents and their children took hand-crafted dragon boats made with recycled materials to the streets and paraded around Qu Yuan Temple (屈原宮), accompanied by clowns and drummers.

The dragon boat festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month each year, commemorates the attempt to rescue the patriotic Chinese poet Qu Yuan (屈原), who drowned in a river.

Unable to save him, people threw zongzi (粽子), glutinous rice wrapped in corn leaves, into the water so that the fish would eat the rice rather than the body of their hero.

Today, people still follow the tradition by eating zongzi and participating in dragon boat races in honor of Qu Yuan's spirit.

The Taipei City Sports Office said that the three-day festival will also feature various activities, including a DIY traditional art workshop, parent-child games and a "Standing Eggs" activity at 12pm on June 19, where the legend, which claims that everything can stand at noon on that specific day, will be put to the test.

More information is available at www.dragonboat.nihs.tp.edu.tw/en/en_index.htm
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