Taiwanese celebrate Dragon Boat Festival with a local flavor

TAIPEI, June 16 (Xinhua) -- Decorating houses with aromatic herbs; making rice puddings; racing dragon boats: the Dragon Boat Festival is full of tradition for Chinese -- both on the mainland and Taiwan.

But Taiwanese here also add unique features to this 2,000-year-old festival, which falls on Wednesday.

Visiting the Taipei Zoo Wednesday morning, Chiang Su-chen kept away from a small exhibition in the zoo's reptile section while her eight-year-old grandson looked inquisitively through the glass cabinet at the snakes, scorpions, centipedes, toads, spiders and geckos.

"They look horrible. I don't dare go close to them," Chiang said.

The reptiles were considered "poisonous insects" by the ancient Chinese.

At the Dragon Boast Festival, which falls on the fifth day of May in the Chinese lunar calendar, people hang aromatic herbs on their door and window frames, carry small bags of dried fragrant herbs, and drink wine mixed with spice, to keep the "poisonous insects" away.

"In May, the weather turns warm, making the spread of disease easier and the reptiles more active. Ancient Chinese believed these rituals would keep bad things away so they could live in peace for the rest of the year," said Dr. Szu-lung Chen, curator of the reptile section at the zoo.

However, Chen and his colleagues wanted to use the occasion to attract visitors' attention to the reptiles.

"Traditionally, people have a misunderstanding about them. For example, geckos are not poisonous. They eat mosquitos and so are good for people. And some snakes are very gentle. Most of these reptiles do not attack people unless they are attacked themselves," Chen said.

One of Chen's colleagues took a beautiful green snake out of the cabinet and showed it to the kids around her while introducing some knowledge about snakes. She also invited the kids to touch the snake.

"The green one is quite pretty," admitted Chiang, "and I was very surprised to see a pure white snake."

White and green snakes play leading roles in Dragon Boat Festival folklore.

In the well-known story "Legend of the White Snake", a young scholar falls in love with a beautiful woman, unaware she is a white snake taking on a human form. Madame White Snake had a maid and a confidante, a green snake.

The scholar discovered the white snake's true identity on the Dragon Boat Festival but continued to love her. Their love was forbidden by the laws of Heaven. A monk intervened and buried the white snake under a pagoda.

Taipei-based troupe Paper Windmill has adapted the story into a puppet show. Each figure is played by a paper puppet 2.5-meters high, manipulated by five artists.

Although paper puppet drama is a traditional art, the troupe tries to add new technologies into the show.

"We have put LED lamps inside the paper puppets so they will be bright on stage. The kids love them," said Li Yong-feng, the troupe's artistic director.

The troupe will perform the show on June 19 in Taipei and tour the island the following two months.

The whole island has Wednesday off to celebrate the festival.

In Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, local government is offering free bus rides to encourage residents to enjoy a low-carbon holiday.

In Taichung in central Taiwan Wednesday morning, local residents walked the streets in wood slippers, deliberately making loud noises with their footwear in a ritual over 100-years old.

According to folklore, the loud noises are designed to wake pangolins from their winter hibernation so they can dig the farmland and help farmers plough the land.