1, the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival

(1) There are various legends about the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival, but in the long process of selection elimination, the legend honoring Qu Yuan is the most widely circulated and popular. "His will is clean, his behavior is clean", from Sima Qian's affectionate narration of Qu Yuan, the image of Qu Yuan's loyalty and patriotism has grown taller and taller in the narratives of successive generations of literati. Since the Han Dynasty, people have believed that the Dragon Boat Festival was started because of Qu Yuan.

(2) In 1942, when the war was still in progress, Guo Moruo's historical drama Qu Yuan used the past as a metaphor for the present and aroused the patriotic fervor of the general public, which made the patriotic image of Qu Yuan more y rooted in people's hearts. 1954, Qu Yuan was included in the list of the world's cultural celebrities.

(3) According to Song Ying, the Dragon Boat Festival was not originally started to honor Qu Yuan, but in the course of its development, it gradually became closely associated with Qu Yuan and patriotism, and became an intangible cultural heritage of mankind.

2, the Dragon Boat Festival traditional customs

(1) eat zongzi

In the fifth of May cook glutinous rice or steamed zongzi cake into the river, in order to sacrifice to Qu Yuan, lest the fish ate, so the bamboo tube containing glutinous rice thrown down, and later gradually use zongzi leaves instead of bamboo tube.

(2) Dragon Boat

The Chu people could not bear to see the death of the wise minister Qu Yuan, so there were many people rowing boats to catch up with the rescue. They scrambled to be the first to chase to the Dongting Lake when they disappeared, is the origin of the Dragon Boat Race, and then every year on May 5 to paddle the dragon boat to commemorate it.

(3) Drinking Xionghuang wine

This custom is very popular in the Yangtze River Basin area. The most well-known one is "The Legend of the White Snake", in which Xu Xian listens to Fahai's slanderous rumors and mixes Xionghuang into wine for the White Lady to drink on the Dragon Boat Festival, which turns her back to her original form.

(4) Hanging Zhong Kui

The Zhong Kui is a custom of the Dragon Boat Festival. In the Jianghuai area, every family hangs the Zhong Kui statue, which is used to suppress the house and drive away evil spirits.

(5) Hanging Mugwort

In the Dragon Boat Festival, every family takes calamus, mugwort leaves, durum flowers, garlic, dragon boat flowers, and makes a human figure called Mugwort. Ai leaves hanging in the hall, cut for the tiger shape or cut color for the tiger, stick to Ai leaves, women compete to wear to seclude the evil and drive away miasma. Calamus as a sword, inserted in the lintel, has the divine effect of driving away demons and ghosts.

(6) Pei Xiangbao

Duanwu Festival children Pei Xiangbao, not only to ward off evil spirits and plague, but also a lapel head embellishment of the wind. Scented bag with cinnabar, andrographis, incense medicine, wrapped in silk cloth, fragrant.

(7) broken fire eye

In Jiangsu, Jiangxi and other places, the Dragon Boat Festival on the day of the family are to a box of water, add a little andrographis, googly-eyed money two, the size of the family are used to wash their eyes, known as the "broken fire eye," it is said to be able to keep a year without eye disease.

(8) playing plums

Old times in Chengdu, Sichuan and other places in the Dragon Boat Festival day are buying plums, in the southeast corner of the city under the tower, up and down on the throw, gathered tens of thousands of observers. In the second year of Guangxu, this custom was discontinued because of the conflict between the plums and foreign missionaries.

(9) wash dragon water

In Hainan, every Dragon Boat Festival will be held in the Yingbin Peninsula "Dragon Water Festival". Wash your body with seawater, you can remove skin diseases, people from all over the island, young and old, have come here to "wash the dragon water".

(10) painting forehead

Duanwu Festival to smear the forehead of the children's custom, the cloud can drive away poisonous insects. The word "king" is drawn on the forehead of a child with andrographis, a borrowed andrographis to drive away poison, and a borrowed tiger to suppress evil.

(11) hide five

May of the lunar calendar, the summer heat is approaching, the plague and poisonous insects breeding, ancient times called May for the evil month. And it is believed that the fifth day of May is an unlucky day. On this day, parents had to take children under the age of one to their grandmothers' houses to hide from the inauspiciousness.

(12) Swimming for All Diseases

Duanwu customs in Guizhou. On the day of the Duanyang Festival, men, women and children should put on new clothes, bring food to go outside for a day of play, and collect wildflowers and herbs in the mountains and fields, and then bring them back to take a bath after boiling them in water at night. The local people call this act for swimming or wash a hundred diseases, and believe that this will make the year auspicious and safe.