How China Nearly Lost its Dragon Boat Tradition
Dragon Boat Festival is in full swing, and expats all throughout China are showing their respect to their proud hosts by dutifully learning how to make zongzi (粽子), the trademark food belonging to this particular Chinese festival.
With "traditional culture" being a commonly-heard refrain in modern China, you'd be hard-pressed not to imagine this scene being an annual custom. And yet, this is not the case.
Despite being one of China's most important festivals, Dragon Boat Festival only became a statutory public holiday less than ten years ago in 2008. And, what's more, traditions like wrapping zongzi and the titular Dragon Boat were on the verge of being forgotten by the Chinese public before that time.
Here's the China Daily giving an ominous warning back in 2004:
The importance of traditional holidays such as the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival are waning, too. In contrast, imports such as Christmas and Valentine's Day are gaining widespread attention. To those who are blindly enchanted by all that is new, ancient sacrificial ceremonies, paper-cutting art, shadow puppets and traditional festivals are hopelessly old-fashioned.
So, what happened? How did Dragon Boat Festival change from its subservient position to Western holidays, to becoming a mandatory rite of passage for expats in Beijing? As it turns out, China was prompted to act only after it was provoked.
Back in 2004, South Korea applied to register its Gangneung Danoje Festival to be part of the United Nation's Intangible Cultural Heritage List. However, this did not sit well with Chinese authroities because China did not do any kind of action to safeguard Dragon Boat Festival — which happened to be the same as Gangneung Danoje.
"How embarrassed we will feel if a foreign country lists the festival as it own cultural property," deputy culture minister Zhou Heping was quoted as saying that year, adding the reminder: "The Dragon Boat Festival has been celebrated in China for more than 2,500 years."
An op-ed written by Huaxia Jingwei (huaxia.com) likewise warned that it was time to act, and tried to motivate its fellow countrymen out of a sense of shame:
Traditional folk culture is the lifeblood of the people. The embarrassment suffered by the Dragon Boat Festival is not just restricted to one particular traditional festival, but is extended to the way traditional folk culture is protected and passed on. It is time to be on the alert!
From its founding in 1949 up until that time, the People's Republic of China did not consider Dragon Boat Festival to be a national holiday, nor had the permanent Security Council member acted to enlist the festival with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The South Korean embassy in Beijing insisted it was not trying to take over China's culture, explaining that they were only submitting for application "a specific sacrificial ceremony connected with the festival that is held in the city of Gangneung."
However, Xinhua refused to accept South Korea's explanation, warning that China's culture was "under attack":
Some Western countries rely upon their might, advanced technology and developed culture to enthusiastically spread their Western values and way of life, causing serious impact upon the traditional folk cultures of developing countries that include China. Much of this traditional culture is under numerous threats, and is slowly disappearing.
Some people like Yueyang deputy mayor Sui Guoqing heeded the call to action by saying: "It is our duty to safeguard the traditional Chinese festival." And yet, others did not view the preservation of culture as a zero-sum game.
"Some Chinese think South Korea is snatching our cultural heritage. This is not true," said Peking University Professor Gao Bingzhong. "'Masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity' refer to the culture of humankind and examining it from a global perspective. In this sense, culture is shared by the world."
It could be that even if South Korea never made the UNESCO application, China would have eventually acted to protect the Dragon Boat Festival on its own volition. And yet, Chinese experts agree that South Korea had prompted China to be more responsible.
"The (2004) application by South Korea reminds the Chinese people that we must cherish our past," said Zhao Shu, chairman of the Beijing Folklorist Society.
South Korea's Gangneung Danoje Festival was proclaimed by UNESCO as a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" in 2005, and later inscribed to the Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2008.
For its part, China managed to skip the proclamation process and have the Dragon Boat Festival along with 22 other cultural heritages inscripted to the UN's Intangible Cultural Heritage List just a year later.
In 2008, China reformed its holiday schedule from being grouped into "golden weeks" into the current iteration, finally ensuring the rightful place of the Dragon Boat Festival in Chinese culture.
So as expats perform their duty to uphold and promote Chinese culture this holiday weekend by learning how to make their own zongzi, we would be remiss not to forget how the Dragon Boat Festival was almost lost to the ages.
Images: iFeng.com, NetEase, Huaxia.com, Baidu, zjol.com.cn, dzwww.com
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