The Qintong Boat Festival is an ancient traditional folk activity that originated in the Song Dynasty. According to legend, the righteous men Zhang Rong and Jia Hu from Shandong once ambushed the Jin army in Qintong Village. The people of Qintong helped bury the fallen soldiers and, every year on Qingming Festival, rowed boats with long poles, competed to clean the graves, and offered sacrifices to the heroic spirits. Over time, this tradition evolved into the custom of rowing boats during the festival. The Qintong Boat Festival is mainly observed in the canal towns of Lixiahe, spanning hundreds of square kilometers. These boat festivals typically include five types of boats: punting boats, rowing boats, decorated boats, tribute boats, and seducing women boats. Each type of boat symbolizes the people's hopes and prayers for national prosperity, prosperity, longevity, and abundant life.
According to legend, during the early Ming Dynasty when Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang came to the throne, he needed to perform ancestral tomb-sweeping rituals during the Qingming Festival (Tomb-Sweeping Day). However, due to years of warfare and displacement of the people, he couldn't locate the graves of his parents. His anxiety led him to seek the advice of his advisor, Liu Ji. Liu Ji came up with a plan to help the emperor find his ancestors' tomb. He suggested that after Qingming Festival, they should send people to investigate the area. They could look for signs of graves where offerings had been made, as it was customary for people to add soil and burn offerings at their ancestors' tombs on this day. Unmarked, abandoned graves would be the ones they were looking for.
Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang followed this advice and embarked on a journey to find his ancestors' tomb. To expedite the search, he ordered boats to be fitted with multiple oarsmen using long poles, which allowed the boats to move swiftly. Whether he ultimately found his ancestors' tomb is uncertain, but his sincere effort touched the people in the Jianghuai region. The story of his journey and the expedited boats became a legend, and people in the Jianghuai region began using boats to conduct tomb-sweeping rituals after Qingming Festival. This tradition eventually evolved into the Boat Festival.
The Qintong Boat Festival is held every year on the second day of the Qingming Festival in Jiangyan, Jiangsu Province. It is usually divided into five types of boats: pole boats, rowing boats, flower boats, tribute boats, and "guai fu" boats. Thousands of boats compete, creating a lively scene on the Qintong River as spring arrives. When the boat races conclude, the festival's activities reach their climax with lively performances, banquets, and the traditional "sending off the boat poles" ceremony, marking the end of the festival. The scale of the Boat Festival grows larger with each passing year and has gained recognition both domestically and internationally.
The tradition of boat racing is prevalent in towns like Qintong, Xingtai, Yuduo, Yuxi, Yedian, Gangkou, Gangyang, Qiaotou, Suchen, Honglin, and more. However, Qintong Town stands out due to its strategic location at a vital transportation hub along the Liyang River, its broad water surface, and its developed economy and culture. During its peak, the Boat Festival in Qintong Town boasts more than 500 participating boats, with over ten thousand rowers and an audience of over a hundred thousand.
The boat racing primarily involves pole boats, with each boat having 30 rowers. Each rower holds a pole, with red cloth tied at the end of the pole. The rowers wear blue pants and white shirts, with white cloth wrapped around their legs and red silk sashes around their waists. Young women wear red on the upper body, blue on the lower body, and adorn themselves with red flowers and red belts, with red cloth wrapped around their legs. During the Republic of China era in 1940, flower boats and tribute boats were introduced, often seen as two boats joined together, featuring stages, decorative lights, banners, and sometimes musical performances by bands or recitations by monks.
