Dragon Boat Festival, why eat ducks?

As the saying goes, "ducks smell incense and wake up their spleen, and bitter summer is not bitter." Dragon Boat Festival is in the fifth month of the lunar calendar. Too much rain in spring and summer will lead to too much water and the weather looks very hot. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that duck meat is cold, which can greatly tonify fatigue, nourish the yin of the five internal organs, clear away heat and relieve fatigue, replenish blood and promote blood circulation, nourish the stomach and promote fluid production, clear away heat and strengthen the spleen, treat physical weakness, physical weakness after illness, malnutrition and edema, and dispel the qi of summer heat and dampness.

Because the Dragon Boat Festival coincides with the duck season, Yongzhou is mostly a water town with many ducks. In the era of lack of materials, ducks breed quickly and hatch only when the weather is warm. Two or three months later, during the Dragon Boat Festival, the ducks grew up. Because people used to live in poverty and only wanted to kill ducks on festivals, every household killed ducks on the Dragon Boat Festival.

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Other customs of Dragon Boat Festival:

Dragon Boat Festival is a folk festival that integrates praying for good luck and exorcism, celebrating entertainment and eating. It originated from the ancient ancestors' choice of "flying dragons over the sky" as an auspicious day to worship the dragon ancestors and pray for evil spirits. The customs mainly include dragon boat race, Dragon Boat Festival, herb picking, hanging wormwood, drinking water at noon, washing herbal water, offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors, soaking in dragon boat water, eating dragon boat rice, eating zongzi, putting paper dragons, putting paper kites, tying colorful silk threads, wearing sachets and so on.

Dragon boat is very popular in the southern coastal areas of China. Since it spread abroad, it has been deeply loved by people of all countries and formed an international competition. The custom of eating zongzi on Dragon Boat Festival has been popular all over China since ancient times, and it has become one of the most influential and widespread folk food customs of the Chinese nation.