The Dragon Boat Festival, also known as the Double Fifth Festival, occurs on the fifth day of the fifth moon of the lunar calendar. It is one of the most important of the annual Chinese festivals.

Boat races during the Dragon Boat Festival commemorate the attempt to rescue the patriotic poet Chu Yuan, who drowned on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in the year 295 B.C., at the age of 37.

Unable to save him, the people threw cooked rice into the water so that the fish would eat the rice rather than the body of their hero. The local fishermen were later told in a dream that the fish, not Chu Yuan, got the rice. Therefore, the next time that they threw rice into the river, they first stuffed it into bamboo sections. This evolved into the present custom of eating tzungtzu: rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, stuffed with ham, beans, bean paste, salted egg yokes, sausages, nuts, and/or vegetables.

Since antiquity the Chinese have believed that the fifth lunar month is a pestilential, danger-fraught period. Sanitation is emphasized, medicines are added to food, aromatic branches are hung above doors, and beautifully embroidered protective amulets or sachets containing spices or medicines are fastened to the clothing of children. And if you can successfully stand an egg on its end exactly at 12:00 noon, then the coming year will be a lucky one.