The Dragon Boat Festival is the most important Chinese Festival, after Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival. It has special historical, as well as cultural, significance and, like most Chinese festivals, it has its own special food - triangular shaped rice dumplings, filled with meat and wrapped in bamboo leaves (see a previous article on this Festival).

I was given two of these rice dumplings by one of my students, but when I revealed that I had not eaten them on Dragon Boat Festival day, I was met with horrified gasps! My assurance to them that I would eat them tonight for dinner was regarded not as the appeasement I intended, but as simply ludicrous. It struck me then, although it seems obvious now, that I just do not share their feelings about Chinese festivals.

And a follow-up thought to that was that while I can learn about their culture and traditions, they can never fully become my culture and traditions. Unlike learning a language and the manners and linguistic behaviour that such learning instills as part of the language learning process, learning about a culture does not necessarily mean that that culture and its meanings and emotions become part of your make-up. It merely makes you a more informed outside observer.

Dragon Boat Festival, unlike the Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Festivals that centre around the natural phenomenon of the moon, is not only culturally, but also historically removed from me. It is a patriotic celebration in honour of a Chinese poet who sacrificed his life for the good of the people by drowning himself in protest over the government's corrupt practices. Expecting me to share the significance and emotion of this Festival is like asking me to celebrate American Independence Day.

What I do appreciate though is getting the day off work.

5 June 2003

Dion Marc Delport

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