China Town of Kolkata - Dragon Boat Festival

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. 

The legend of Qu Yuan is something like this - he was a Minister in the state of Chu during the Warring States period of the Zhou dynasty of ancient China. He had advised the King to ally with the state of Qi (one of the seven warring states) to fight against the most powerful state of Qin. But the king thought him to be a traitor and sent him to exile. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry that showed his love for his country. Qu Yuan was however right, and the state of Chu was captured by the state of Qin. On hearing about the tragedy, Qu felt so much remorse that he committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River in the Hunan Province. 

When the local people came to know about his suicide, they took out their boats and rowed to the river in search of Qu’s body. They could not find his body in the river, so they paddled their boats up and down the river, hitting the water with the paddles and beating drums in order to scare away the water spirits. They also threw rice dumplings into the water to keep the fishes and the water spirits away from Qu Yuan’s body. Later these rice dumplings also became offerings to the spirit of Qu Yuan.

The rice dumplings are called 'chong' or ‘zongzi’ in Chinese. The adults drink ruby sulphur wine or realgar wine or Xionghuang wine - an alcoholic drink that consists of cereal wine and powdered yellow-orange mineral. The elders give perfumed pouches to children to ward of disease and negativity. The most popular activity is actually dragon boat races in water bodies. The festival, an Intangible cultural heritage festival declared by UNESCO, also include traditional Chinese opera, songs and traditional dance shows like Lion Dances - which make the families and communities around world together in celebration. Chinese legend says that the winning team will bring good luck and a good harvest to their village.

Today Dragon Boat racing is an official competitive sports under the rules of International Dragon Boat Federation and it was held as a demo sport at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Dragon Boat festival was first celebrated in Kolkata in 2015 in Old China Town of Kolkata, organized by Indian Chinese Association & t2 (ABP group's The Telegraph) in collaboration with Chitpur Local - Celebrating A Heritage and Calcutta Walks with support from Consulate General of China in Kolkata. In 2015 the first edition of Kolkata's Dragon Boat Festival was accompanied with food stalls from Fo Kuang Shan Buddhist Centre from Tangra (though completely vegetarian) and local people. Ni Hao Chinese School also holds a book stall - mostly selling English – Chinese dictionaries, Chinese prayer sheets and customized bookmarks. 

Calcutta Rowing Club came in support in 2016 and the festival was held in Rabindra Sarobar. While the Dragon boats weren’t there, but it retained the remaining fervor and mood of a Dragon Boat Race. In 2017 dragons became real - old and new China Town came closer as colorful boats resembling as dragons raced in the waters of Calcutta Boating and Hotel Resorts, which is just neighboring Tyangra, the new China Town. Since then, except during the Covid-19 pandemic the festival is being celebrated with success in participation of people of the city. 

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