Dragon Boat Festival is also called Mid-Autumn Festival, because it is just around the summer solstice, and the direct point of the sun is on the Tropic of Cancer. The position of the sun in the sky is in the middle of a year, so the Dragon Boat Festival is also called the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Dragon Boat Festival is also called Yulan Festival.
The ancients attached great importance to bathing on May 5th. According to Liang Zongbian's Chronicle of Jingchu, "May 5th is called Lan Festival." Orchid is a kind of vanilla, which is produced in Shan Ye. Its leaves can be boiled to cure wind, so the ancients used orchids in early summer. The Book of Songs is a poem about picking orchids. When picking orchids, young people meet at the water's edge and talk about love. The word "orchid" in the poem "scholar and woman, square" is "orchid". People will collect orchids and go home to cook soup to clean their bodies. Liang Wudi's "Confession Poetry" said: "Lan Tang bathes in dirt and repents the soul."
But orchids are not easy to pick, so people use weeds such as wormwood and cattail instead of cooking soup. "Five Miscellaneous Things" said: "If there is no blue soup, take a five-color grass bath at noon." The so-called five-color grass refers to the leaves and stems of five plants, not specifically five colors. In some places, leaves such as grass shop, wormwood, pottery and willow are mashed or directly decocted in water. But there were other flowers and plants, Qiu Huanxing recalled.
"It is also a folk custom to bathe children with moxa sticks during the Dragon Boat Festival. I remember when I was a child in my hometown in Guangdong, every Dragon Boat Festival, my mother put a wooden basin in the yard, which was soaked with wormwood, cypress, impatiens and magnolia. In the afternoon, when I saw that the selenium in the water was warm, I was told to jump into the basin. Mother covered the water with apples and sprinkled it on my head, chanting' Aipu washes itself and eliminates all diseases!' "
Dragon Boat Festival is also called Dragon Boat Festival.
Dragon boat race, also known as dragon boat race, is the most representative national recreation activity of the Dragon Boat Festival. This sport is very popular in several provinces south of the Yangtze River.
Why the dragon boat race? The popular saying among the people is to save Qu Yuan who threw himself into the river. Dragon boats scatter zongzi along the river to prevent fish in the water from eating Qu Yuan's body. At the same time, people beat gongs and drums and blew trumpets to summon Qu Yuan's soul. The saying in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces is: The Legend of Yue said that the competition began with Gou Jian, the king of Yue. "(Song Panzimu's Deep Sea Record) That is to say, in order to serve the country, Gou Jian, the king of Yue, led the people to practice naval battles in the name of regatta. But this is all folklore, not enough.
In fact, the custom of dragon boat racing is much earlier than that of the Warring States Period. According to written records, there were dragon boats in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Mr Wen Yiduo, a modern scholar, thinks that "dragon boat race should be the relic of prehistoric totem society" (Dragon Boat Festival test). He further argued: "The Dragon Boat Festival was originally a totem festival held by Wuyue people, and the dragon boat race was a semi-religious and semi-social entertainment program in this festival" (Duanjie history education).
Taboos of Dragon Boat Festival
The Dragon Boat Festival on May 5th in the old calendar is the most important traditional festival in summer in China. May is the time when the summer heat comes, and when epidemics and plagues will occur. From the perspective of modern medicine, the incidence of Japanese encephalitis and encephalomyelitis is also the highest at this time. The ancients thought it was a bad month. "The Book of Rites and the Moon Order" said: "It's the moon, the days are long, the yin and yang are fighting, and life and death are separated. When a gentleman fastes, he must cover his body. He must not be impatient, stop talking, enter, taste thin, bring peace, abstain from desire as soon as possible and be calm. A hundred officials are quiet and not punished, so as to determine the merits of Yin. " May is a season of intense struggle between Yin and Yang and lifelessness. During this period, people should maintain physical and mental stability and abstain from all kinds of lust, especially lust. Administrative affairs should also adopt a "inaction" governance model.
Since it is a bad month, there will naturally be many taboos and it is not appropriate to build a house. "Building a house in May is bald." It is not appropriate to be an official. "When I arrive at the official in May, I will never move again." It is not appropriate to cover the quilt. There is a popular saying that "no one sleeps in May" and "add a lining and die a daughter; Add a face and die a Han; Add a bed and you're dead. " Avoid shaving children's heads, otherwise, the main children will have epilepsy and get sick. Avoid too much rain, or the main harvest will be bad. As the saying goes, "money can't buy a drought in May, and you won't have enough to eat in June. It rained heavily in May, and the Jade Emperor sold his son. "
The prevalence of taboo in May began in the Han Dynasty, expressing people's concern about life in May. When we notice the influence of the natural climate in May on people's living conditions, we should also see that people's understanding of May in Han Dynasty is based on a cultural concept. In the Xia Dynasty, May was not considered as an evil month. At that time, there was only the custom of storing rushes and medicines for health care. The Han Dynasty was an era in which metaphysics prevailed. People look at the changes of natural time and space with the concept of yin and yang and five elements. As far as the concept of Yin-Yang and Five Elements is concerned, May is the moment when Yang-Qi is at its peak, and it is also the moment when Yang-Qi begins to decline. At this juncture, people will naturally feel fear, and Mei is endowed with evil ethical significance.