DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL FUN 端午节 duānwǔ jié The Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional Chinese holiday that takes place on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. In 2022, the festival will be celebrated on June 3! The festival is traditionally celebrated by holding dragon boat races and eating zongzi, a type of sticky rice dumpling wrapped in a bamboo leaf. At Asia Society Texas’s AsiaFest celebration, on Saturday, June 11, you will be able to see a real dragon boat on our front lawn, and learn how they are rowed to the rhythm of a large drum. There is a special story behind the Dragon Boat Festival. A long time ago in China there lived a poet named Qu Yuan. He found out that a neighboring state was going to attack the state that he lived in. But when he told his king about the attack, the king kicked him out of the state. Several years later, Qu Yuan found out that his state had been conquered. He was so sad, that he threw himself in a river. The neighboring people were so upset that they went out in their boats and threw packets of rice into the river so that fish would eat the rice instead of Qu Yuan’s body. This is why people make the zongzi dumplings and race boats for the Dragon Boat Festival. In this activity packet you can make a dragon boat puppet, make a zongzi dumpling out of paper, and learn how to write “dragon” and “dragon boat festival” in Chinese!
DRAGON BOAT PUPPET To make this dragon boat puppet, simply print out these sheet, color in the dragon, then cut it out and paste it to a popsicle stick or any other kind of stick to make it move!
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ZONGZI PAPER FOLDING Instructions
BACKGROUND Zongzi are a traditional style of sticky rice dumplings that are often eaten on the Dragon Boat Festival. Usually, sticky rice is filled with different types of foods, and then wrapped with a bamboo leaf or another type of leaf. There are all sorts of different fillings, from red bean paste to pork to duck eggs! The shapes of zongzi range from being approximately tetrahedral in northern China to an elongated cone in southern China. INSTRUCTIONS 1. Print out the template on pages 6 and 7 of this activity packet back to back on one sheet of paper. (Use green paper to make it look like bamboo leaf!) 2. There are three zongzi templates on each page. Cut along the dark green lines to separate the templates. 3. Find the vertical dotted lines (v1–v5). Make a crease along each of the lines. Unfold the paper completely. Hint: To make the most accurate creases, keep the guidelines facing out at all times. 4. Find the horizontal dotted lines (h1–h3). Make a crease along each of the lines. Unfold the paper completely. 5. Now, fold the paper in half along line v3, with the guidelines facing out. Find all the red dotted lines and make a crease along each of the lines on one side of the paper. Unfold the paper completely.
6. Locate the patterned area at the bottom section of the paper. Fold that patterned area backwards, and then glue sides A and B together.
7. Open up the paper from the inside to form a cone. Crumple up a piece of tissue paper and insert it into the cone as the dumpling filling.*
*Insert tissue in here!
8. With the tissue still inside, bring the tip of the cone forward, so that the black arrow is pointing towards the star.
9. You will now see the letters E and F.
10. Fold areas with the E and F towards each other, as you pinch down on the middle section. Your paper should now be shaped like a tetrahedron.
tetrahedron
pinch down on the middle section
11. You should now have a rectangular tail remaining. Fold the tail against the other side of the tetrahedron. You will now see a little triangular piece of paper that sticks out. Fold the triangle down and tape it against the side of the tetrahedron.
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F Fold patterned area backwards. Glue sides A and B together.
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Fold patterned area backwards. Glue sides A and B together.
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Fold patterned area backwards. Glue sides A and B together.
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Learn How To Write Chinese Characters (Easier)
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Learn How To Write Chinese Characters (Harder!)
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