On the origin of the Double Ninth Festival; Double ninth festival poem

The Double Ninth Festival is also called ascensiontide. On this day, people climb high and look far and miss their loved ones. As the poem says, "I miss my relatives twice every festive season." So how did the Double Ninth Festival come about?

It turns out that in ancient China, nine was called "Yang number", and on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, two or nine were all Yang numbers, so it was called "Chongyang". The Double Ninth Festival originated from a Taoist fairy story: in the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a young man named Huan Jing in runan county, with both parents and a large family of wife and children. Although life is hard, you can get by with half a meal. Who knows, unfortunate things have come. There are plagues on both sides of the Ruhe River, every family is sick, and no one is burying bodies everywhere. This year, Huan Jing's parents also died of illness.

When Huan Jing was a child, he heard an adult say, "There is a god of plague living in Ruhe, who goes out for a walk every year. It takes the plague everywhere. Huan Jing is determined to learn from the teacher and destroy the evil for the people. I heard that there lived a big fairy named Fei Changfang on the southeast mountain, so he packed his bags and set off for the mountain to learn from his teacher.

Fei Changfang gave Huan Jing a demon-reducing dragon sword. Huan Jing got up early and went to bed late, dressed in Dai Yue, and practiced day and night. Another year in a blink of an eye. Huan Jing was practicing sword that day when Fei Changfang came forward and said, "On September 9th this year, the plague god of Ruhe will come out again. Hurry back to your hometown and kill people. I will send you a bag of dogwood leaves and a bottle of chrysanthemum wine to let the elders in your hometown climb the mountain to avoid disaster. "