Moreover, the Dragon Boat Festival custom of the old Lanzhou people is also different from that of Jiangnan. In Lanzhou and suburban rural areas, few people made zongzi themselves during the Dragon Boat Festival. Because Lanzhou is located inland, it produces neither glutinous rice nor palm leaves. Coupled with the inconvenient transportation, most people in old Lanzhou don't make zongzi. Dragon Boat Festival is to buy some zongzi, or go home to taste or give gifts after the festival.
Lanzhou people's Dragon Boat Festival food is candied fruit. In the past, during the Dragon Boat Festival, in the vast rural areas in the suburbs, every household would brew candied fruit. Its raw materials can be wheat, highland barley, jade wheat, etc. From three days before the Dragon Boat Festival, housewives began to buy sweet candied songs and cook wheat to make sweet candied fruit for the Dragon Boat Festival. The brewed candied fruit is also given to neighbors, relatives and friends for tasting. Although this home-brewed candied fruit is not as mellow and sweet as the one bought, it tastes good.
The custom of eating candied fruit on Dragon Boat Festival in Lanzhou originated from the old custom of offering rice wine to the gods and ancestors in ancient China. It is the primitive cultural form of the Dragon Boat Festival left over from thousands of years, and it also contains the information of folk culture.
For thousands of years, Dragon Boat Festival is not only a traditional folk festival, but also a big festival to drive away evil spirits and diseases and pray for peace. Many customs of the Dragon Boat Festival revolve around the theme of preventing and curing diseases and praying for health. In the past, on the morning of Dragon Boat Festival, there were vendors selling mugwort leaves in the streets and farmers' markets in Lanzhou. Hanging mugwort leaves indoors during the Dragon Boat Festival has a good insecticidal and bactericidal effect. Wearing a vanilla bag can improve immunity. There is a poem "Ode to a Sad Poem" that says: "Ai Ye Julia is white, clear-tempered, and eliminates evil spirits; Cigarettes don't enter the ghost temple, adding spring to life. " (Author: Zhang Duntian)