The Dragon Boat festival dates back to ancient times and occurs on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Originally a religious practice, it is now purely recreational. The Dragon Boat festival celebrates the death of the poet Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in the 3rd Century BC as a protest against a corrupt government. The legends are that the towns people attempted to rescue him by beating drums to scare fish away from eating his body and threw rice dumplings into the river to tempt the fish away from their hero.