Fifth of the Fifth

The people of Chungking, climbing down to the Yangtze, laughed and chattered and munched glutinous rice cakes wrapped in leaves. This was a double holiday: the good news had come of Free China's greatest victory in six weary years of war (TIME, June 14); and this was the immemorial Festival of the Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon--to Chinese, the "Fifth of the Fifth"; to foreigners, the' colorful day of the dragon-boat races.*

The river front of drab wooden huts had become a gaudy stage. Against the mighty backdrop of brown and grey gorges and leaping yellow waters the lean boatmen hopped and screamed like jays. Above their ragged blue trousers they wore emblazoned shirts. They had daubed yellow pigment on the heads of their boy helpers. They had oiled the keels of their long craft to maker them swifter. Now they waited for the starting signal.

Suddenly down the steep bank rushed one of the boatmen, shouting and waving a dragon's red-and-gold head and twisted tail. Drums and gongs beat madly, rockets hissed, the galleries roared--and the race was on. Twice across the river the rowers strained. In other times, the crews decided the outcome by fighting. Now, from a judges' junk, the winners received their prizes: bright red sashes.

Thus the capital made holiday. In so doing it also honored the memory of Ch'ii Yuan, high-minded poet and statesman of Chu, the feudal state that covered much of central China some 2,200 years ago. Ch'ii sought vainly to ferret corruption from his government, was slandered and exiled. Heartbroken, he composed his famed poem Li Sao (Dissipation of Sorrow), then on the fifth day of the fifth moon drowned himself in the Mi-Lo River. Legend relates that kind fishermen tried to recover his body, thereby began the custom of the dragon-boat races. But in Chungking last week the festival's origin was less in mind than the chance it gave for a few hours of play, the feeling it gave of China's ageless endurance.

*The races, so called because the boats have carved dragon heads on their prows, take place on many rivers and lakes. In Chinese homes the day is observed by the use of charms to ward off bad spirits that cause calamities.

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