From Africa to Europe, dragon boat races are spreading across the world
Events held as far afield as Uganda, Portugal and Slovenia, as state media describes annual festival as a ‘global holiday’
China ushered in its annual Dragon Boat festival on Monday with plenty of traditional pageantry and feasting, featuring rice dumplings, boat races, and parades, as state media touted celebrations of the holiday in far-flung places such as a high-profile dragon boat race in Uganda.
Besides festivities across the nation – from making zongzi, or glutinous rice dumplings, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia to dragon boat races in eastern China’s Jiangsu province – there were over 85 countries and regions celebrating with dragon boat races, news portal Thepaper.cn reported on Monday.
Within China, people were expected to take an estimated 47 million trips during the holiday’s long weekend, an increase of nearly 8 per cent from the year before, state-owned operator China Railway said.
Global celebrations of the festival, which commemorates the ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan, were described by Chinese state media as a sign of the country’s “cultural self-confidence”, a phrase the government has used repeatedly to boost Chinese culture and soft power.