Qu Yuan, Visually

Reciting Qu Yuan poems at Double Fifth, the Poet turned Patriot

I'd like to collect here a few images that illustrate how the figure of Qu Yuan was used throughout Chinese history. (A continuing entry)



The Dragon-Boat Festival, also known as 'Double Fifth' festival or duan wu jie, is now often explained as a memorial tribute to Qu Yuan. In 2008, a major celebration activity series in Zigui, Hubei included an assemblage of middle school students to recite Qu Yuan's poetry (they are reciting "Ode to the Orange" 橘颂). (source: Xinhua news)

As David Hawkes so spurnfully points out, however, this tradition was not a product of Qu Yuan's day, but more likely an innovation of the Confucianist 'cult of Qu Yuan' that probably began to develop in the second half of the Han dynasty. The story that dragon boats were launched to save Qu Yuan or scare away the fish, as well as the one that rice and/or rice dumplings (known as zongzi) were thrown into the river to save the corpse of Qu Yuan from the fish (the wikipedia entry on Dragon Boat Festival contains these stories, for example), are probably inventions that help to bind together the figure of Qu Yuan with an older folk tradition.

Wen Yiduo, Poetry and Poetics Expert, 1920s and 1930s

Wen Yiduo, Painting by his son, Wen Lipeng (?)

David Hawkes quotes Wen Yiduo to show the general tendency to praise Qu Yuan in the 20th century:

Although Qu Yuan did not write about the life of the people or voice their sufferings, he may truthfully be said to have acted as the leader of a people's revolution and to have struck a blow to avenge them. Qu Yuan is the only person in the whole of Chinese history who is fully entitled to be called 'the People's Poet'.

Qu Yuan, the Poet turned Patriot