Central China's Yichang City holds the Qu Yuan's hometown Dragon Boat Culture Festival

YICHANG,China,June 6,2022 --"Qu Yuan belongs not only to Yichang City,but also the world and all mankind," Wang Li,vice governor of central China's Hubei Province and top official of Yichang City,said emotionally as he addressed the opening ceremony of the 2022Qu Yuan's Hometown Dragon Boat Culture Festival held on June 2 in Yichang.

The dragon boat race

Yichang is the hometown of Qu Yuan,a well-known poet and a minister of theState of Chu during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC),whose death was closely related with the origin of China's Dragon Boat Festival,a day traditionally marked with dragon boat races and eating Zongzi,a pyramid-shapeddumpling made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves.

After the opening ceremony,a grand original performance named "China in thesongs of Chu Kingdom" was staged. Fifteen programs in various forms,including song and dance,drum performance,acrobatics and rap,presented a culturalaudio-visual feast to audiences at home and abroad,according to the PublicityDepartment of Yichang Municipality.

On June 3,a total of 16 teams with over 400 participants from Hubei,Hunan,Jiangxi,Guangdong and other provincial regions competed in a dragon boat racein Yichang's Zigui County with the backdrop of the Three Gorges Dam tocelebrate the traditional Chinese festival.

Yichang's Dragon Boat Culture Festival activities seek to present the city'srich cultural deposits related with Qu Yuan. In addition to the opening ceremony,a dragon boat race,an investment match-making meeting,folkperformances and other activities,the first Qu Yuan culture researchinternational forum,the annual meeting of the Chinese Association of Qu Yuan,a global collection of works on Qu Yuan from young writers and other activitieswere also held.

As a national Dragon Boat Festival event,the Qu Yuan's hometown Dragon BoatCulture Festival has been held six times,with an average of 150,000 visits each year. In 2009,the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival,with Qu Yuan's hometownDragon Boat Culture Festival as its main content,was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Therefore,Dragon Boat Festival has become a thousand-year-old cultural event and a cultural symbol with global influence in Qu Yuan's hometown of Yichang.

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