✦ 英文美文 · 第八辑 ✦

Every June, millions of Chinese people eat zongzi and watch dragon boat races. But why? The answer leads to one man — Qu Yuan, a poet from over two thousand years ago. Qu Yuan loved his country and gave honest advice to the king. But other officials told lies about him, and the king sent him away. He wandered along rivers, writing sad poems about his homeland. In 278 BC, his country fell. Heartbroken, Qu Yuan walked into the Miluo River. Local people raced out in boats to save him and threw rice into the water to feed the fish. That is how zongzi and dragon boat racing began.

If you stacked all the zongzi eaten during one Dragon Boat Festival, the pile would almost reach the moon! Chinese people eat over 10 billion zongzi during the festival. That is more than one for every person on Earth. The fun part? Zongzi taste different everywhere. In the south, people fill them with salty egg yolk and pork. In the north, they prefer sweet red bean paste. Every family has its own secret recipe. Making zongzi is an art — fold bamboo leaves into a pocket, fill with sticky rice, tie with string. Whether sweet or salty, every zongzi wraps a piece of home.

Before the Dragon Boat Festival, you will see bundles of green plants hanging on doors across China. These are mugwort and calamus — nature's own bug spray. When summer comes, insects wake up and look for food. Ancient Chinese people found that mugwort gives off a strong smell that drives mosquitoes away. Calamus has long sword-shaped leaves, believed to cut through bad energy. Today, scientists found that mugwort contains artemisinin — a natural oil that really does repel insects. A Chinese scientist named Tu Youyou won the Nobel Prize for studying this plant and turning it into a medicine that saves millions from malaria.

Dragon boat racing started as a Chinese tradition. Today, there are teams in over 80 countries — from Canada to Australia, from Germany to South Africa. Each boat has a dragon head at the front and a drum in the middle. The drummer beats a rhythm, and 20 to 50 paddlers row together in perfect time. If even one person is out of sync, the boat slows down. Training is hard. Teams practice for months, paddling thousands of times every day. Their hands get blisters, then calluses. But when the race begins, all the pain disappears. In 2024, dragon boat racing appeared at the Paris Olympics.

Before the Dragon Boat Festival, grandmothers across China make xiangnang — tiny scented sachets that children wear around their necks. These bags are filled with dried herbs: mugwort, calamus, and sometimes mint. In the past, people believed the sachets could drive away evil spirits. Today, we know the herbs really do keep insects away during hot summer months. But the real magic is not in the herbs. Each stitch is a grandmother's wish for her grandchild to stay safe. The bright colors — red for luck, yellow for health, green for growth — all carry meaning. These hand-sewn sachets remind us: the best gifts are made with love.

Give a Chinese grandmother scissors and a sheet of red paper, and in ten minutes she will hand you a butterfly so detailed you can count the veins on its wings. This is jianzhi — Chinese paper cutting, an art form that is over fifteen centuries old. People stick the cut-outs on windows during festivals, especially at Chinese New Year. A fish means wealth. A peach means long life. A pair of mandarin ducks means love. The rule is simple: one piece of paper, one pair of scissors, and the cut must never break. Paper cutting joined the UNESCO heritage list in 2009, but for the old women who do it every year, it was always about wishing the family well.

Long before Netflix, Chinese people had their own cinema — piyingxi, or shadow puppetry. A white cloth hangs between the audience and a lamp. Behind it, a puppeteer moves flat leather figures with thin sticks. The shadows dance, fight, and tell stories hundreds of years old. The puppets are made from donkey or ox skin, cut into pieces, painted in bright colors, and joined with thread so every joint can move. A skilled puppeteer can make a horse gallop, a warrior draw a sword, and a princess wave a fan — all with just three sticks. Old masters in Shaanxi still perform every night, keeping the world's first cinema alive.

When you think of kites, you think of fun and sunshine. But the first kites, invented in China over 2,300 years ago, were not toys — they were tools of war. The earliest kite was built by Mozi, who spent three years making a wooden bird that could fly for one whole day. After paper was invented, kites became lighter and cheaper. Generals used them to measure distances to enemy walls, carry messages, and even drop leaflets over enemy camps. Today, Weifang in Shandong is the kite capital of the world. Every year, thousands gather there to fly kites shaped like dragons, octopuses, and spaceships.

Legend says tea was discovered by accident. A Chinese emperor named Shennong was boiling water under a tree when a few leaves fell into his pot. He drank it and felt refreshed. That was nearly five thousand years ago. Today, tea is the most popular drink on Earth after water. China grows more tea than any other country, with over 2,000 varieties. Green tea, black tea, oolong, white tea, pu'er — they all come from the same plant. Tea is not just a drink in China. It is a way to welcome guests and a daily habit that keeps the mind calm and focused. As the saying goes: tea and zen taste the same.

Four hundred kilometers above your head, Chinese astronauts are growing vegetables in space. On the Tiangong station, scientists have grown rice, lettuce, and other plants in orbit. What surprised them? Plant roots grow differently in space. On Earth, roots grow down because of gravity. In space, they grow in all directions — like they have lost their sense of direction. This matters because if humans want to live on the Moon or Mars, they will need to grow their own food. Space missions last for months. Astronauts cannot carry enough food for the whole trip. The space garden is small now, but it might feed the first people who walk on Mars.

We know more about the Moon than the bottom of our ocean. The deep sea is dark, cold, and under crushing pressure. Yet life thrives there — and it looks like something from a science fiction movie. China's submersible Fendouzhe has dived nearly 11,000 meters into the Mariana Trench. Its cameras captured impossible creatures: fish with see-through heads, worms that glow in the dark, and crabs with legs like spider silk. These animals survive without sunlight. Some make energy from chemicals pouring out of cracks in the ocean floor. The ocean covers 70 percent of our planet, but we have explored less than 20 percent. The biggest discoveries are still waiting in the dark.

Have you ever listened to a song and felt a chill run down your spine? That is your brain releasing dopamine — the same chemical that makes food taste good and sunsets feel beautiful. Music has a direct line to your brain. When you hear a song you love, your brain lights up in multiple areas at once — memory, emotion, and movement all fire together. That is why music can make you want to dance, cry, or remember something from years ago. This power is used in hospitals. Music therapy helps patients with dementia recall lost memories. One man who had not spoken in months began singing every word of a childhood song. Just press play and let music do its work.