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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-07-21 Daily Xml
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DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:49): Last month I had the pleasure to attend two Dragon Boat Festival events. One was organised by the Taiwanese Association of South Australia and the other one was organised by the Chinese Welfare Services. The Dragon Boat Festival in Chinese is called the Duānwǔ Jié (I might have to hand that to Hansard).

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.S. LEE: Okay. This festival is traditionally celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. The festival commemorates the death and life of a famous Chinese scholar by the name of Qu Yuan, who was also a beloved minister serving the King of Chu. However, because of a conspiracy he had to leave the service of the king, and, in his anger and sadness, he jumped into the river and committed suicide.

All the citizens wanted to rescue him, and they grabbed a lot of the Chinese dumplings, called zongzi, and threw them into the river so that the dragon monster in the river would not eat his body but rather the rice pudding. This festival continues today and has been adopted by many Chinese communities in South Australia.

It has been declared a public holiday in mainland China since 2008, and it is a public holiday in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. It is also celebrated in countries with Chinese populations, such as Singapore and Malaysia. Equivalent festivals outside of Chinese-speaking societies, such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam, have also adopted the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival.

It was a pleasure to attend the annual dinner of the Taiwanese Association of South Australia. So much effort was put into preparing the dinner. All the volunteers cook up a big meal and everyone shares the pleasure of not only the rice pudding but also all the delicacies from Taiwan, as well as the Chinese cuisine.

I do want to mention also the Chinese Welfare Services, because when it organises the Dragon Boat Festival it incorporates a multicultural theme with it. The participants included Italian, Latvian and Filipinos. They have also built it as a multicultural concert and encourage positive ageing development programs so that seniors can perform in front of an audience. It was an enormous pleasure to see this cross-cultural exchange and linguistic diversity between older people in South Australia.

The Chinese were singing Italian songs, the Latvians were performing the Tai Chi dance and the Filipino seniors were singing Chinese songs. I just loved their energy. I congratulate the organisations for putting up such a wonderful show, as well as putting in all the effort and wonderful work they do in that community for the Dragon Boat Festival.

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