A Chinese Danish Cultural Fusion.
On the 23'rd of June, Danish and Chinese both celebrate each their own event, In China the celebration is the Dragon Boat Festival (Mandarin: Duānwǔ; Cantonese: Tuen Ng), in Denmark to celebrate Midsummer.
You can read more on my homepage about how this cultural fusion turned out.
Witches and the abolishing of witch burning is also a central theme as the bonfire traditionally will have a wooden/straw filled witch as according to tradition on evening before the first of May at midsummer all witches fly off on their broomsticks to “Brocken” in Germany. And what better way to send away the witch than in flames…
In Denmark the last witch was decapitated and then burned on April 4'th 1693 - Good thing that times have changed and that we are no longer slaves of superstition from the dark ages.
So there you have it two cultures celebrating each their tradition on the same day.
We did have Zhongzi thanks to my mother in law's cooking skills, though we had them without the traditional leaves due to the acute lack of bamboo in Denmark :) and later we attending the biggest bonfire event in Copenhagen. How's that for cultural fusion!
