Dragon Boat Festival Celebrated at Vuk S. Karadžić Primary School

Fifth-grade students at Vuk S. Karadžić Primary School in Banja Luka celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival, also known as Duānwǔ Jié, on 17 June 2025, as part of their school year-end performance.

In addition to singing and other performances that they prepared for their parents, the students of this school, the first to organise the Chinese language courses back in 2018, also completed this school year by performing a traditional dragon dance in the schoolyard.

The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the most important Chinese holidays, celebrated in China during this period with dragon boat races and the making of rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves, known as zongzi.

There are many legends about the origins of this holiday, the most famous of which is the one about the celebration of the holiday in honour of Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan (340–278 BC) was a Chinese patriotic poet and exiled official during the Warring States Period. He drowned in the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, when his state of Chu fell under the rule of the Qin state. In honour of Qu Yuan, this holiday is celebrated by beating drums and organising boat races on rivers to scare away fish and evil spirits from Qu Yuan's body.

Legend has it that locals threw sticky rice from the traditional Chinese dish zongzi into the river to prevent fish from eating the poet's body.

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

端午节快乐

Duānwǔ Jié Kuàilè!