Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional cultural festival popular in China and other countries in the Chinese character cultural circle. According to legend, Qu Yuan, a poet of Chu State in the Warring States Period, committed suicide by jumping into the Miluo River on the fifth day of May, and later generations also took the Dragon Boat Festival as a festival to commemorate Qu Yuan. There are also sayings in memory of Wu Zixu, Cao E and meson push.
The origin of the Dragon Boat Festival covers the ancient astrological culture, humanistic philosophy and other aspects, and contains profound and rich cultural connotations. In the process of inheritance and development, a variety of folk customs blend with each other, and the content or details of customs are different due to different regional cultures.
Dragon Boat Festival, Spring Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day and Mid-Autumn Festival are also called the four traditional festivals in China. Dragon Boat Festival culture has a wide influence in the world, and some countries and regions in the world also celebrate it.
Inheritance and development:
Dragon Boat Festival was originally held for the tribes who worshipped dragon totem in Baiyue area (south of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River) in ancient times. Before the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a custom of holding tribal totem sacrifice in the form of dragon boat race at 3 pm in Baiyue area. According to prehistoric cultural records such as Hemudu site, canoes and wooden paddles were used in competitions as early as 7000 years or earlier.
According to textual research, the prerequisite of dragon boat race must be in the port area where there are many rivers and rice, which is the characteristic of southern China. A large number of cultural relics and archaeological studies unearthed in modern times show that as early as ancient times, Baiyue ancestors created a splendid high civilization, and ancient ancestors used "dragon" as their totem. At that time, the Dragon Boat Festival was actually a festival to worship the ancestors of dragons.
The Han Dynasty was the first great development period after the reunification of China, and the economic and cultural exchanges between the North and the South made customs and habits merge with each other. In ancient times, calendar year, calendar month, calendar day and calendar day were all common with heavenly stems and earthly branches, and calendar day was "Zhongzheng". In the Han Dynasty, the north and south were unified and the calendar changed. In order to facilitate the festival, the court stipulated that the Dragon Boat Festival should be changed to the fifth day of the fifth lunar month every year.