In the beginning of the fifth month of thelunar calendar there is Dragon Boat festival. Along with Spring Festival,Qingming Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival it belongs to four traditionalChinese festivals, it was also the first Chinese festival to be placed on theUNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Facing the come of the Festival,International Tea Culture Club of Zhejiang University organized the thirdactivity of ��Festival Baked with Tea��.
On the evening of 5th June��the music and the fragranceof zongzi permated the Tea Culture Room, which is waiting forinternational students of ZJU gathered together. They putted colorful braceletson their wrists and started to celebrate the tea party.
At the beginning, thehost Dong Xingyuan and Marta Mo��ko (Poland) introduced the origins and customsof the Dragon Boat Festival. Dragon Boat Festival comes from worshiping the Heaven,was created on the base of dragon totem ceremony in ancient times. Later, therewas a story of Chu country poet Qu Yuan, who threw himself to the river holdinga stone during the Warring States period. The story also blended a lot of folkcustoms and got a rich cultural meaning. Eating zongzi, paddling dragon boats,hanging mugwort, pinning multicolored ropes, drinking millet wine, making andwearing pouches �C those all belong to Dragon Boat Festival special customs.
Next, there was the��tea�� part held, which International Tea Culture Club activity can��t be lackof. Member of ITCC �C Dai Han brought the graceful and elegant flower teaperformance. Hot water was turning over and over, flowers were slowly openingin the water filling the air with their delegate fragrance. After theperformance all participants had the opportunity to make own flower tea. Therewere red roselle, delicate and a little bit bitter chrysanthemum, jasmineflower with its strong fragrance, Chinese wolfberry, orange peel, peppermint,lemon grass to mix together and make an own original taste.
Fresh tea was accompaniedby a little bit greasy mung bean cake, ��five poison cakes�� and zongzi �C perfectmatch to Dragon Boat Festival. The ��five poison cakes�� because of their specialname and design made everybody very curious. As the staff introduced: ��fivepoison cakes are actually cakes with rose filling. Just in the past, during theearly Xia dynasty they were used to express the wish of preventing diseases andkeeping good health, that��s why there are images of scorpions, toads, spiders,centipedes and snakes carved on the top as the symbols of >five poisons<. The cakes are special snack in the Northern China during the Dragon Boat Festival��.
After tasting Dragon BoatFestival snacks, the smell of wormwood filled in the classroom andparticipants�� attention was taken by pouches. International students from allover the world were sitting around one table, one needle, one thread; one here,one there. And in the hand �C not only a pouch to be sewed, but also deepinterest of Chinese traditional culture and understanding of folk customs.
At the end of the tea partyparticipants were happily sharing the effects of their work, like showingpouches sewed by themselves. Also the pitch-pot game competition made theatmosphere much more hotter. During this exchange participants one by oneexpressed hope that more tea cultures activities will be organized, becausethey are eager to introduce the tea culture of their own countries. So theInternational Tea Culture Club of Zhejiang University will still provideopportunities to exchange the tea culture, create space to promote Chineseculture and put effort to let it merge with other cultures peacefully.
Wrriten by Zhang Yuan
Translated by Marta Mo��ko
Photographed by Zhang Yuan
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