The drumming quickens, and you find yourself shouting too

A dozen-odd dragon boats line up across the river, hulls riding low, paddles still, the water level as if holding its breath. By the time a spot on the bridge is found, the drummer at each prow has begun that slow, steady beat — and then the starting signal cracks, the drumming surges, the sound of paddles entering the water so dense there is no telling how many boats, the people on both banks crying out at once. The cry goes up, and one finds oneself crying out too, before realising it. Taiwan's Dragon Boat races are like this — fierce, real, utterly without reserve, that drumbeat genuinely changing the rhythm of the heart.

Why race boats and eat zongzi? Over two thousand years ago, Qu Yuan, a poet of the state of Chu, drowned himself in the Miluo River. Legend says the villagers rowed out to save him and, finding nothing, feared the fish would gnaw his body, so they wrapped rice and threw it into the river to feed them — and that became the origin of racing dragon boats and eating zongzi at Duanwu. So beneath this lively festival hides an ancient story of loyalty and grief; only, two thousand years on, it has become the most boiling afternoon on the river.

Every county in Taiwan holds races — Taipei's Keelung River, Kaohsiung's Love River, Tainan's Luermen — each with its own scene. The races split into morning and afternoon; the morning is mostly warm-ups, the afternoon finals the heart of it. Walk to the mooring area afterwards and many crews are happy to take photos; Taiwanese are easiest to talk to during festivals — stand nearby and someone naturally turns to pass a word.

The temple fair beside the races is another main event — candy floss, pinball stalls, old-fashioned snacks, the temple's incense and the river's drumbeat layered together, the cloying sweetness of sugar laced with charcoal grill and incense. Our family squeezed in among the stalls, the child crouched on the ground earnestly trying to stand an egg on its end — they say an egg will balance at noon on Duanwu. He tried a dozen times, and the instant the egg stood steady he was more thrilled than at any boat, his whole face flushed red.

The races break up, but the drumbeat stays in the ears. We sat down at the temple front, peeling the meat zongzi just bought, the bamboo leaf lifting to a rush of glutinous rice and braised pork steam against the face. An old man beside us fixed on the TV broadcast, now and then shouting out excitedly. It struck me that his excitement and our family's just now on the bridge were the same kind, each only keeping the festival in their own way.

That afternoon, the feeling of the drum striking the chest, beat by beat, will likely never be forgotten. I think you will be like us — years from now, come Duanwu, what comes first to mind will not be which boat won, but that instant both banks cried out as one, and a family crammed at the temple front, watching, with that bit of foolish joy, an egg at last stand up.