The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the traditional festivals in China, and multicolored thread is one of the customs of the Dragon Boat Festival. The multicolored thread is a thin rope made up of five colors of silk, namely blue, red, black, yellow and white. As the custom and accessories of the Dragon Boat Festival, the multicolored thread is usually tied on the wrist.

Every year on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, it is the annual Dragon Boat Festival, also known as Chongwu Festival, or Noon Festival, or Mulan Festival. The word Dragon Boat Festival first appeared in the Western Jin Dynasty, and it was also recorded in the Chronicle of Jingchu Years in the Southern and Northern Dynasties: "The fifth day of May is called the Bathing Orchid Festival."

Dragon Boat Festival is the oldest festival in China, and its origin can be traced back to the pre-Qin period. The Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional custom of China people since ancient times. Due to the different regions and living habits, the Dragon Boat Festival has produced many different customs.

Dragon boat race, eating zongzi, hanging calamus, wearing sachets and wearing five-color silk thread have become the most festive customs of the Dragon Boat Festival. Today, the Dragon Boat Festival has gradually become an inclusive and comprehensive traditional festival with the theme of participation by all people, preventing diseases and avoiding plague, and praying for well-being.

Among many customs of the Dragon Boat Festival, colored silk thread is a custom with a long history and culture.

Ying Shao in the Eastern Han Dynasty recorded the long life wisp in "Customs Tong Yi": On May 5th, people simply tied colorful silk threads into a rope and tied it on their arms or wrists, and there were several names for it, such as long life wisp, life-prolonging wisp, soldiers' sword, five-color wisp and Zhu Suo.

In the Tang dynasty, there was a tradition in the court to give the ministers the long life wisps at noon; The court in Song Dynasty also followed this tradition. In the Qing Dynasty, people tied five-colored silk threads on children's arms on May 5th, and there was usually a saying that men were left and women were right. People also gave this five-colored silk thread a nice and meaningful new name "Longevity Line".

The color selection of five-color lines is also very particular. The first is the definition of five colors. Which five colors are they?

In fact, as early as the pre-Qin period, we had the concept of "five colors" in our culture. There is a record in the Book of Examination of Zhou Li: "The matter of painting is mixed with five colors, the east is blue, the south is red, the west is white, the north is black, the sky is mysterious, and the land is yellow." This is a document about "five colors". From this document, we can also draw a conclusion that the concept of "five colors" is derived from "five elements".

In the Five Elements Theory, the corresponding colors of gold, wood, water, fire and earth are: gold is white, wood is blue, water is black, fire is red and earth is yellow, and the five elements corresponding to the five elements are: wood is east, fire is south, gold is west, water is north and earth is center.

The five elements coexist and resist each other, which is an artificial but objective system in the blending of man and the objective world. It pays attention to the connection between things and the unity between man and the objective world in which he exists.

The use of the five colors corresponding to the five elements, namely, cyan, red, yellow, white and black, should naturally conform to this law. Therefore, the five colors that the ancients found in nature and thought could not be mixed with other colors: cyan, red, yellow, white and black are positive colors.

The five-color line of the Dragon Boat Festival is a good example of combining China traditional culture with real objects. The five-color line is made of red, yellow, blue, white and black lines, which corresponds to the five-element theory in China traditional culture. The colorful silk thread of the Dragon Boat Festival expresses people's ideals and wishes in life. The visual color indicator of "five colors match five elements" in the colorful silk thread shows the symbolic significance of exorcising evil spirits, avoiding plague and praying for Naji.

Like dragon boat races and dumplings, the five-color line, as one of the customs of the Dragon Boat Festival, has gradually accumulated into a unique cultural memory, which has penetrated into people's lives and carried people's good wishes for life.