The Dragon Boat Festival or Chang Festival fall on 28 May this year (2009 )The Chang Festival marks the death of a Chinese poet and scholar Qu Yuan who drowned in 296 BC in Hunan province in China . When people heard of his disappearance, they scoured the river in boats to rescue him, beating their drums to scare off the fishes from nibbling at his body. Unable to find his body, they made glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves and threw them into the river in the hope that the fishes would eat these dumplings instead of his remains. Boats were decorated with dragon heads on their bows.
This festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. The tradition of making dumplings (called 'chang') is celebrated by the Chinese community in Malaysia with the offering of the dumplings to the gods and their ancestors. The festival is celebrated in Penang annually with an international dragon boat competition which is immensely popular and attracts participants from all over the world.
