About The Traditional Chinese Festival — Dragon Boat Festival

Let us Know More About The Traditional Chinese Festival – Dragon Boat Festival

Dragon Boat Festival,Chinese Traditional Festival.Yes,maybe most people know it,but do you know the origin of Dragon Boat Festival? Do you know Do you know what our traditional folk customs are? Now let me introduce to you:

Origin

The fifth lunar month is considered an unlucky month. People believed that natural disasters and illnesses are common in the fifth month. In order to get rid of the misfortune, people would put calamus, Artemisia, pomegranate flowers, Chinese ixora and garlic above the doors on the fifth day of the fifth month. Since the shape of calamus forms like a sword and with the strong smell of the garlic, it is believed that they can remove the evil spirits.

Another origin of Dragon Boat Festival: Before the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), the fifth month of the lunar calendar was regarded as a bad month and the fifth day of the month like a bad day, and known as the Dragon Boat festival nowadays. Poisonous animals will appear starting from this days such as snakes, centipedes, and scorpions as well as that people may get sick easily after this day. Therefore, during the Dragon Boat Festival, people try any way to avoid bad luck. For example, people paste pictures of the five poisonous creatures on the wall and stick needles in them. People also make paper cuttings of the five creatures and wrapped these around the wrists of their children. Big ceremonies and performances developed from these practices in many areas, making the Dragon Boat Festival a day for getting rid of disease and bad luck.

Decorating doors by hanging wormwood and calamus plants is an important ritual of the Dragon Boat Festival. People believe that doing so will drive evil spirits and diseases away.

Qu Yuan

The story best known in modern China holds that the festival commemorates the death of the poet and minister Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 BC) of the ancient state of Chu during the Warring States period of the Zhou Dynasty. A cadet member of the Chu royal house, Qu served in high offices. However, when the king decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was banished for opposing the alliance and even accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry. Twenty-eight years later, Qin captured Ying, the Chu capital. In despair, Qu Yuan died by suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River.

It is said that the local people, who admired him, raced out in their boats to save him, or at least retrieve his body. This is said to have been the origin of dragon boat races. When his body could not be found, they dropped balls of sticky rice into the river so that the fish would eat them instead of Qu Yuan’s body. This is said to be the origin of zongzi.

During World War II, Qu Yuan began to be treated in a nationalist way as “China’s first patriotic poet”. The view of Qu’s social idealism and unbending patriotism became canonical under the People’s Republic of China after 1949 Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War.

Traditional folk customs

The Dragon Boat Festival is a very popular folk festival in China. It is a traditional custom of the Chinese nation since ancient times. Due to the vast area and many stories and legends, not only many different festival names have been produced, but also has different customs around the country.

Three of the most widespread activities conducted during the Dragon Boat Festival are eating (and preparing) zongzi, drinking realgar wine, racing dragon boats;

In my hometown, on the Dragon Boat Festival, we will eat zongzi, hang wormwood and calamus, and worship the gods and ancestors.

Welcome to Enjoy the Dragon Boat Festival with YRSOOPRISA.