Zongzi and the Death of Qu Yuan

Chinese tradition places Qu Yuan in the state of Chu during the Warring States period, serving as a minister and poet whose loyalty and outspoken warnings against corruption at court led to his exile rather than to influence; when Chu fell to the rival state of Qin, tradition holds that Qu Yuan, in despair at his state's collapse, drowned himself in the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Local people are said to have raced out in boats to try to save him or recover his body once word spread, an act the Dragon Boat Festival's boat races are held to commemorate directly, and, failing to find him, to have thrown rice wrapped in leaves into the river both as an offering to his spirit and, in some versions, specifically to keep fish and river spirits from consuming his body instead.

The zongzi eaten at the festival today descend directly from that thrown offering in the tradition's own telling. Whether Qu Yuan is a historical figure whose death the festival genuinely commemorates, or a legendary explanation attached after the fact to festival customs that already existed on their own account, is a question the surrounding record does not settle cleanly, and the atlas records the Qu Yuan story as the festival's own account rather than as verified history.