The Dragon Boat Festival in Japan, also known as Children's Day, is a festival for boys. Families with boys on this day put up carp flags and eat dumplings and cypress leaf cakes to congratulate them. Carp flag is erected in the hope that the child grows up as healthy as the carp, there is a Chinese "hope for the son of the dragon" meaning. When you look at the carp flag from below, the carp floating in the blue sky looks like it is swimming vigorously in the water. In order to avoid evil spirits, irises are put under the eaves of houses or bathed in bath water. Speaking of avoiding evil spirits, there is a legend that once upon a time, a monarch named King Ping Shu killed an unfaithful minister who, after his death, turned into a poisonous snake and continued to harm people. A wise minister, wearing a red snake head, sprinkled with calamus wine to fight with it, and finally subdued the snake. Since then, it has become a traditional custom to insert calamus, smoke moxa leaves and drink calamus wine at the Dragon Boat Festival, which is called "Ai flag invites a hundred blessings, and the sword cuts down a thousand evils" in Japanese. The custom of the Dragon Boat Festival was introduced to Japan from China after the Heian Period. Nowadays, it has a very different meaning from that of China. In China, rice dumplings are eaten and dragon boat races are held on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar in honor of Qu Yuan; in Japan, rice dumplings and kashiwagi are eaten mainly to avoid evil spirits. Calamus is used to ward off evil spirits because its leaves are shaped like swords. It is true that calamus is a traditional Chinese medicine and can eliminate diseases. In Japanese, "calamus" and "shomu" are homophones, so the Japanese Dragon Boat Festival has gradually become a festival for boys. Although the significance of the Dragon Boat Festival in China and Japan is not the same, the culture of China and Japan still has a long history. The Dragon Boat Festival, China has inserted the custom of wormwood to avoid evil, Japan has inserted calamus to avoid evil; China has the story of carp jumping over the Dragon Gate, Japan has the custom of hanging carp flags. So we chew "dumplings" at the Dragon Boat Festival in Japan, and the more we chew, the more flavorful.