St Mary's Calne
The Dragon Boat Festival is an important traditional festival celebrated in China and other Chinese-speaking countries, and the girls have been taking part in activities to mark this celebration.
To celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival we enjoyed special cultural activities in our Mandarin lessons, such as making fragrance pouches, cooking traditional food and 'standing the eggs' (Our favorite!). People often say that on the Dragon Boat Festival, eggs can stand upright because of the Earth's gravity. It sounded very magical and quite hard to believe so we decided to give it a try. We concentrated and tried to stand the egg. Some classmate succeeded immediately, while others needed to stay calm and focus on their eggs! Fortunately, for the majority of us, our eggs stood up after a brief time later. This was a very cool experience!
Another activity we enjoyed was making fragrance pouches. Traditionally, fragrance pouches were used in China to drive insects and germs away in the summer, as well as to ward off evil spirits. We used Chinese-style fabric and red yarn, folded the fabric and sewed it together, then stuffed the pouch with cotton. Although this took a lot of time and a few scratched fingers, the final result was very fulfilling and rewarding. We loved this experience, and we learned a lot about the importance of these pouches!
Our final activity was cooking traditional food associated with the Dragon Boat Festival. With the help of Mrs Mitchell and our peers, we were able to make three dishes: smacked cucumbers, sticky rice and ‘ant climbing the tree’ noodles with pork. What I enjoyed the most was how we were able to add our own sauces and oils to our food so we could customise the taste to our liking. All the food was delicious, but we all agreed that the sticky rice was the best out of the three. We even managed to bring some food back to the house to share!
Joanne C, Ailey L and Beana T, UIV