The story of the origins of the festival is widely known: Qu Yuan, the virtuous poet (340-278 BC), drowned himself in the River Miluo, and the people rolled dragon boats to save him, throwing rice to feed fishes so that they would not eat the corpse.

Why do Chinese people place a suicide and an intellectual in such a high position, so that rituals in his memory have spread nationwide to become a festival?

Qu lived during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) when most parts of China were divided into small kingdoms that went on fighting. Qu was the "Left Minister" of the Chu Kingdom. Trying hard to stop the kingdom from falling into the hands of the Qin, a kingdom in the north, Qu advised the king to resist but was turned down. The king banished Qu as a result of false accusations made by jealous officials. But when relations between the two kingdoms worsened, the king called Qu back.

Later the king was imprisoned in the Qin Kingdom, when he went there for negotiations. He died there after three years. The son refused to resist Qin, as he was married to a princess of the Qin kingdom. In 296 BC, Qu, then in his mid-50s, was banished for a second time. Grieving over the condition of his homeland, for years he wandered about south of the Yangtze.

During this time, he poured out his feelings of grief and concern for his state in the allegorical Li Sao (Lament), a long autobiographical poem in which he tells of his political ideals and the corruption and mismanagement of the court.

In 280 BC, the Qin launched an overall invasion of the Chu and in 278 BC captured the capital. The news reached Qu Yuan while he was near River Miluo in Hunan Province. In frustration at being unable to do anything to save his homeland, he clasped a big stone to his breast and leaped into the river to end his life.

For thousands of years, Qu has been called a patriotic poet, and people have admired his loyalty to his kingdom. Nobody ever accused him of delaying the end of the Warring States Period in his attempts to stop the Qin Kingdom from reuniting the whole country.

Faithful officials

From one point of view, the Chinese attitude towards the Qu reveals an important traditional value-loyalty. This loyalty between emperor/king and officials under his rule makes the base stone of the structure of feudal society.

The Chinese character for officials under the ruler is "chen", originally meaning "slave", which best illustrates the relationship between the ruler and officials. Confucianism compared the management of a country to that of a family, putting the emperor in the position of patriarch, and officials the children who should obey their father unconditionally. "If the emperor demanded that the official die, he could only die," as the saying goes.

Any rebellion against the emperor is unjustifiable, even if the emperor is no good and his decisions disastrous. An official could expostulate with the emperor over his decisions and policies, but never rebel. Taking a position in the imperial court means giving a vow of loyalty towards the ruler. The official should be ready to give his life for the emperor. The proverb says, "Wensi jian, wusi zhan", meaning the civilian official should die of expostulation while military officers should die in war.

Qu is an example of the civilian official, while Yue Fei, a general in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), is an example of the military officers.

In his day, minority nationalities on the northern border, such as the Jin, invaded central China repeatedly. As a valiant and wise commander, Yue once defeated an enemy said to be 500,000 strong with only 800 soldiers on the outskirts of today's Kaifeng, Henan Province. His enemy sighed: "It is easier to shake Mount Tai than to shake Yue Fei's army." Thanks to Yue and a contemporary general, Han Shizhong, the shaky regime of the Song, maintained itself for the time being.

Although Yue Fei and other hawks had won brilliant victories and recovered the greater part of the territory, it was the capitulationists like Qin Hui who wielded real power at court. They even resorted to false accusations to eliminate the war party and finally had Yue Fei sent to prison and executed.

Chinese people hated Qin Hui, and made clay sculptures of him and his wife kneeling in front of the tomb of Yue, but no one dared blame the emperor for giving the order of drawing Yue from the battlefield and having him executed for no reason.

Yue Fei's story initiated a Chinese food. Deep fried twisted dough sticks are a common break food. Legend has it that the dough sticks were originally in the form of Qin Hui. People expressed their hatred by frying and biting him.

This unconditional loyalty out-lived feudal Chinese society and grew into passionate worship for an individual, leading to the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Many officials, intellectuals and well-respected people were persecuted, some killed.

(Shanghai Star June 13, 2002)