Xu Shen, a scholar of Han Dynasty, was born in 1857. It said: "The dragon, the scale worm's length, can be quiet and bright, short and long. The vernal equinox ascends to the sky and the autumnal equinox dives deeply. " In myths and legends, Fuxi and Nu Wa, the earliest ancestors of the Chinese nation, were dragons and snakes with human heads and snake bodies. Fuxi and the picture of female disaster in the cultural relics of the Han Dynasty are examples of the image of "descendants of dragons".
The image of the dragon seen today is based on a snake, which accepts the four feet of a beast, the mane of a horse, the tail of a beard, the horn of a deer, the scratches of a dog, the scales and whiskers of a fish. ......
Scholars have accumulated the results of people's textual research for thousands of years and reached a relatively consistent conclusion: dragons are only imaginary animals symbolizing a better life in ancient times; Dragon originated from totem worship in primitive clan society.
According to experts' research, the earliest totem of "dragon" is the ancient Wuyue people in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. One of the evidences is that Wu Yue had the popular custom of serial tattoos in ancient times to show his status as a "son of the dragon" and pray for protection; Secondly, there are ancient books & gt It is said that the dragon boat race originated from Gou Jian, the King of Yue, and the Dragon Boat Festival also originated from wuyue.
Later, as the same concept and ideology as * * *, the dragon represented the "totem" and symbol of the whole Chinese nation. According to relevant experts' research, after hundreds of thousands of years of floods, famines and matriarchal society, human beings began to gradually enter paternal society about 6500 years ago. According to ancient records, Taihao Fuxi, who was ranked first in Huang San and ranked first among the hundred kings at that time, led his troops from Ji Cheng, Gansu (now Tianshui City) to the east of the Yellow River and settled in Wanqiu (now Huaiyang County, Henan Province) market. Subsequently, Fuxi and the French king united all the tribes in China, taking the body of a python, the head of a crocodile, the horn of a stag, the eye of a tiger, the scales of a red carp, the legs of a giant lizard, the claws of a goshawk, the tail of a white shark and the whiskers of a fin whale, and created a unified totem of the Chinese nation-dragon. The descendants of the dragon came from this. Fuxi also painted gossip, took fire, made calligraphy contracts, made musical instruments, and urged marriage, thus creating Chinese civilization.
This custom has a history of more than two thousand years in our country. The Story of Jingchu Times once recorded that on the first day of the first month, when the rooster crowed for the first time, everyone got up and set off firecrackers in their own yard to drive away the evil spirits of plague.
There was no gunpowder or paper at that time, so people burned bamboo to make it burst and make a sound to drive away the plague. This is superstition, of course, but it reflects the ancient working people's desire for Aetna.
Because the original firecrackers were burning bamboo, they were called "firecrackers" and have been used ever since. In the Tang dynasty, it was called "explosive rod", and later it was called "firecrackers". Nanchang poet Lai Hu's poem "Early Spring": "The new calendar is only half open, and the pavilion is still bursting." I wrote the scene of burning bamboo poles during the Spring Festival.
Later, after constant chemical experiments, alchemists found that saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal together could cause combustion and explosion, so they invented gunpowder. Some people put gunpowder in a bamboo tube to detonate, and the sound was louder, which fundamentally changed the ancient custom of burning bamboo. By the Northern Song Dynasty, there had been fireworks wrapped in paper, and there was a distinction between single ring and double ring. It was renamed "artillery warfare" and later "firecrackers". Firecrackers soon became a sacred thing to ward off evil spirits.
Setting off firecrackers, in addition to hoping to turn evil into good before the arrival of the New Year, is also used to congratulate weddings, business opening and major celebrations.