Dragonboat Festival

Dragonboat Festival
Originally uploaded by arlyna.

Our 4-day weekend is coming up. Shops have started selling traditional Chinese crafts in time for the Dragonboat Festival or Duan Wu Jie. The nearby traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy near where we work has set up a stall outside dedicated to selling these hangings filled with mugwort and calamus, which are said to ward off diseases and evil spirits.

For me Dragonboat Festival signals the start of summer and eating zhong zi. When  used to live in Taiwan, it was usually the hottest day and and you can truly feel that summer is here. Then there were the Dragonboat Festival races I used to go to. Here in Shanghai it has just started to come back again with expats trying to organize some races.

Read more about this tradition here.