Auther：2022-06-02
The Dragon Boat Festival is held on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar every year, and it is one of the most important traditional festivals in China. According to the Jingchu Chronicle, because of the midsummer ascent, Shunyang is on the top, May is midsummer, its first noon day is the fine day of ascending, so the first five days of May are also known as Duanyang Festival. In addition, the Dragon Boat Festival is also called Noon Festival, May Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Yulan Festival and so on.
There are many theories about the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival. In Chinese history, the most legendary claim commemorates the death of qu Yuan, a poet of the Chu state during the Warring States period: when the king of Chu decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was expelled for opposing the alliance and even accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a large number of poems. In 278 BC, the Qin army attacked the Chu state of Kyoto, Qu Yuan saw his motherland being invaded, his heart seems pierced with a knife, but he could not bear to abandon his motherland, on May 5, after writing the masterpiece Huaisha, he committed suicide by bouldering and throwing Miluojiang, composing a magnificent patriotic song with his life. In order to send mourning, people swam on the river, and then gradually developed into a dragon boat race. The people were afraid that the fish in the river would eat his body, so they went home and brought rice balls and threw them into the river, so as not to spoil Qu Yuan's body with fish and shrimp, which later became the custom of eating rice dumplings.
The customs of the Dragon Boat Festival are rich and colorful. These festivals revolve around the form of dragon sacrifice, blessing, disaster and so on, and pinned on people's wishes to welcome good fortune and ward off evil spirits and eliminate disasters. Its main contents are:
1. Eat rice dumplings. Rice dumplings are a food made with glutinous rice and wrapped in reed or bamboo leaves. It comes in different shapes and fillings. In northern China, people use red dates as the filling of rice dumplings. In southern China, people use fresh meat and egg yolks as fillings;
2. Dragon boat racing. The dragon boat looks like a Chinese dragon. A group of people rowed a dragon boat together. At the front of the dragon boat, a team member will beat a drum to boost the morale of his teammates;
3. Wear a five-wire rope. During the Dragon Boat Festival, people wear multicolored silk threads on their wrists or ankles. It is said that five-colored silk threads can drive away evil spirits and protect children from diseases;
4. Drink male yellow wine. During the Dragon Boat Festival and after the festival, the climate is hot, flies fly, poisonous gas rises, and diseases are easy to germinate. The ancients believed that all kinds of diseases in life are caused by the inhalation of germs through the mouth and nose. In the process of fighting various diseases for a long time, people have found that drinking Xionghuang wine can detoxify and clear heat, so drinking Xionghuang wine during the Dragon Boat Festival has become popular.
5. Hang wormwood or calamus. The folk proverb says: Qingming insert willow, Dragon Boat Festival, insert wormwood. When the Dragon Boat Festival arrives, the temperature rises, which is the high incidence of disease. At this time, people will use the special fragrance and function of wormwood or calamus to hang a few plants in front of their homes to repel insects and mosquitoes.
As a traditional festival of the Chinese nation, the humanistic connotation contained in the Dragon Boat Festival is not just to eat a rice dumpling. The customs of drinking xionghuang wine, hanging calamus, artemisia, mugwort leaves, lavender, baizhi, and dragon boat racing, coupled with the patriotic poet Qu Yuan, who used flesh and blood as a soul sacrifice, made the Dragon Boat Festival have long been transformed into a strong complex in the heart of the Chinese nation.
