Zigui, a small county in the western part of Central China's Hubei Province, is known to visitors as the hometown of Qu Yuan, a great poet and statesman of the Warring States Period (475-221 BC).
Qu Yuan once served as a supervisor and imperial household administrator in the state of Chu. But later he was banished by the state's muddle-headed ruler to a remote place south of the Yangtze River. When he got the news that the state of Qin had captured the Chu capital, he was so overcome with indignation and sorrow that he drowned himself in the Miluo River, in today's Hunan Province.
Qu's major poems include 'Lisao (Lament at Parting),' 'Jiuge (Nine Lyrical Poems)' and 'Guoshang (The Sacrificial Songs)' which have won him international fame. A variety of vivid folk tales about the patriotic poet are still frequently heard today.
The Duanwu Festival, a traditional Chinese festival falling on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month each year, when people hold dragon boat races and eat zongzi, special dumpling wrapped in leaves, is believed to have been started in commemoration of Qu Yuan's death in 278 BC.
The original Qu Yuan Memorial Hall was built in AD 820 in the Tang Dynasty and was rebuilt several times in the course of the country's history. The present memorial hall was built in 1982, and is four times larger than the previous ones. It has a distinctive white gateway and walls edged in red, as well as a statue of the poet from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) with many stone inscriptions.
