Qu Yuan and the Boats Sent to Find Him

The story most commonly told about the Dragon Boat Festival concerns Qu Yuan, a poet and minister at the court of the state of Chu during the Warring States period. Exiled after his counsel against alliance with the rival state of Qin went unheeded, tradition holds that he composed some of the earliest and most celebrated poetry in the Chinese literary tradition during his years away from court, work later gathered into the anthology known as the Chu Ci. When Chu fell to Qin forces in 278 BCE, Qu Yuan is said to have drowned himself in the Miluo River in despair at his homeland's defeat.

Local people, tradition continues, raced out in boats to search the river for his body, an action remembered in the dragon boat races that give the festival its English name, and threw rice wrapped in leaves into the water to keep fish and river spirits from consuming his remains, a practice remembered in the zongzi eaten at the festival today. Qu Yuan's story gave the older festival a patriotic and literary focus it had not originally carried, and he is honored elsewhere in Chinese culture as a founding figure of poetry as well as a model of loyal remonstrance against a ruler who would not listen.