Dragon Boat Festival – Let’s Not Make This An International Incident

2009-05-29

I hope everyone out there is enjoying the Duan Wu/Dragon Boat Festival. The actual holiday was yesterday, and the official holiday runs from yesterday through Saturday, with many people coming back to work on Sunday. Yes, this is another one of those utterly bizarre things that is claimed to be a three-day holiday but is really one work day off.

Anyway, my Inbox is full of lovely cultural-type stories about the origins of the holiday (Qu Yuan's patriotic suicide), the usual customs (dragon boat racing, eating zongzi). Nice, but far from exciting.

Fortunately, there is an ongoing battle over bragging rights to the holiday between China and Korea, which is fun. Back in 2005, Korea was granted recognition for its "Dano" holiday (also celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month of the year) by UNESCO, with the Koreans claiming that they have been observing the holiday for the past 1,500 years.

But wait a minute. The holiday can be traced back to events that took place in Hubei around 300 B.C. Observance of the holiday spread from China to other Asian locales, such as Korea, Japan (where they originally celebrated "Tango no Sekku" on, you guessed it, the fifth day of the fifth month of the year — since supplanted by Children's Day festivities), and Vietnam (Tết Đoan Ngọ).

So China is a bit miffed at Korea's UNESCO filing, and this year announced that it would file its own application. This leads us to the obvious question: is holiday recognition by UNESCO more like a Chinese trademark (first to file) or more like a Common Law trademark (first to use)?

Yes, I realize that everything I write about seems to come back to IP law eventually — funny, that.

My UN law is a bit rusty, and UNESCO procedures for some reason has never come up in my career. You will cut me some slack, therefore, when I admit that I don't know who is going to win the great dragon boat holiday fight.

To be honest, I assume that a cultural organization like UNESCO probably does not get into the business of choosing whose holiday it is. This is probably some sort of registration process, and I guess that China's application will be accepted and that Korea's recognition will remain in force.

A cultural fight would have been more fun, though. I pictured ambassadors chucking zongzi at each other.

Enjoy the holiday.

Tags: China News, dragon boat festival, duanwu