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| Google Doodle of Dragon Boat Festival 2021 |
For the uninitiated, Kolkata has two China Towns - old one in the center of the city at Tiretti Bazar and new one at the boundary of the city at Tangra. And the China Towns in Kolkata are the only ones in India.
This is the Cheenapara (চীনেপাড়া) series on my blog. In this story the topic is Dragon Boat Festival. Interesting thing is Kolkata never celebrated this festival until 2015, though first Chinese Tong Achew stepped his feet in Bengal during 1770's. The main reason is simple - Dragon Boat festival needs water bodies where boats can be raced, and being in the center of city, Tiretti Bazar's Chinese community could not able to organize such festival in the absence of big water bodies. Well our sacred river, the Ganges could be an option but they never think of it.
Dragon Boat festival, also known as Tuen Ng or Duwanu Jie Festival, is a traditional Chinese festival which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month in the Chinese lunar calendar. It is famous in China and other historical China towns across the globe like in San Francisco, London and Singapore. The festival pays homage to poet and hero Qu Yuan with a special dish called 'chong'. Chong is delicious glutinous rice cake stuffed with meat or sweet paste, wrapped in bamboo leaves.
