June 1 was International Children's Day here in China. Every year on this day school-age children have a day off from classes. Moreover, they are given no homework (or, at least, that is what happened at my daughter's school). No homework is a big deal for even primary school students, as it seems even first graders spend two hours a day or more on homework (based on my daughter's experience). In addition to their temporary liberation from homework, there are various special activities for children on this day.
I first became aware of Children's Day during my first real visit to the Chinese mainland in 2000 (I had taken a brief cross-border trip from Macau in 1984). My wife and I were visiting her hometown of Shantou (formerly referred to in English as Swatow). One day we were in a McDonald's restaurant (!) and I noticed there seemed to be a lot of children around us. It was explained to me that this was due to Children's Day--apparently many parents had decided that American-style fast food was appropriate fare for the holiday.
The origin of this holiday is somewhat unusual. A number of sources on the Internet indicate the holiday began in Turkey in 1920. The June 1 date is supposed to be due to the confluence of two events in 1925--an international conference on child welfare in Switzerland and a Dragon Boat Festival celebration for Chinese ophans orgnized by the Chinese consul general in San Francisco. The holiday is celebrated in countries other than China (as the word "International" suggests), but tends to be associated with Communist countries, perhaps due to a resolution made by pro-communist women's groups during a 1949 conference in Moscow designating June 1 as Children's Day to protest the supposed abuses against children committed by the "imperialist warmongers" (!).
Incidentally, I've heard it said in China that in the U.S. there is no Children's Day because in America every day is "Children's Day"!
The Dragon Boat Festival (端午節 or Duanwujie), is a more traditional Chinese holiday, celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which is June 23 this year. At this time of year, the Chinese traditionally thought the sun was at its most powerful (at the time of the summer soltice). Given that the sun was associatd with the masculine forces of nature (as opposed to the feminine powers represented by the moon), and that the dragon was a symbol of the masculine side of nature, it is perhaps not surprising that this holiday has a connection with dragons.
Apparently, there are a number of explanations of the origin of this holiday. Perhaps the most popular explanation is that the holiday commemorates the poet Qu Yuan, who lived in the third century B.C. In his time, China was divided into several warring states. When his homeland, the state of Chu, was taken over by the more powerful state of Qin, he drowned himself in a river in despair (the ruler of Qin would go on to become China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang). Probably the two things most associated with this holiday are zongzi and dragon boat racing (pictured above). Zongzi are a sort of dumpling made of sticky rice which often contains peanuts or pieces of meat. They are wrapped in bamboo leaves and steamed. They are said to come from the bamboo-wrapped rice dumplings fiishermen dumped in the river for the benefit of Qu Yuan's spirit. In Chinese-American director Wayne Wang's early movie Dim Sum (he is probably best known for directing The Joy Luck Club), there is a hilarious scene in which the two adult daughters of a Chinese immgrant mother and their uncle try to figure out how to properly wrap the zongzi in bamboo leaves in the mother's absence. In the end they cheat by using a sort of wooden mold.
As for dragon boat racing, it is sometimes claimed that it developd from the efforts of fishermen to retrieve Qu Yuan's body. Today, dragon boat racing is not only popular in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but also in other places with Chinese populations of some size.
I can't say that the Dragon Boat Festival has much resonance for me personally (although I do like eating zongzi). However, I do remember that the day I left Taiwan in June 1984 after nine months of Chinese language study happened to be the Dragon Boat Festival. Any connection? I haven't figured one out yet...