First Dragon Boat Festival hosted on campus

The Department of Modern and Classical Languages and the Association for Asian and Asian American Awareness hosted a Dragon Boat Festival in the lobby of North Village C on Thursday April 16, 2015.

The festival is celebrated across China and some other Asian countries. Dragon boat festivals often include dragon boat races on lakes and rivers as a form of reenacting the frantic search for Qu Yuan’s body.

Qu Yuan was a poet and diplomat who drowned himself in the Miluo River as a form of protest.

Traditionally the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on Tuan Wu, or Double Fifth Day, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar.

“We brought it forward so it could be during the academic year and the Asian Month,” said Lynn Lim, president of A5.