When did the Dragon Boat Festival begin?

Dragon Boat Festival (the fifth day of the fifth lunar month), also known as Duanyang Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Zhengyang Festival, Yulan Festival and Tianzhong Festival, is a traditional folk festival in China.

Dragon Boat Festival is a festival founded by the ancestors of Baiyue in ancient times to worship their ancestors. It is said that Qu Yuan, a poet of Chu State in the Warring States Period, jumped into the Miluo River on May 5th and committed suicide. Later, people also took the Dragon Boat Festival as a festival to commemorate Qu Yuan. There are also sayings in memory of Wu Zixu, Cao E and meson push. Generally speaking, the Dragon Boat Festival originated from the auspicious day when the ancestors of Baiyue in the south chose "Dragon Ascending to Heaven" to worship the dragon ancestors, and injected the seasonal fashion of "eliminating diseases and preventing epidemics" in summer. Dragon Boat Festival is considered as an "evil moon day", which originated in the northern part of the Central Plains to commemorate Qu Yuan and other historical figures. The formation of the Dragon Boat Festival custom can be said to be the product of the integration of North and South customs.

Extended data:

According to documents, heavenly stems and earthly branches was invented by the ancient Yue Huang. The earliest calendar of the ancient Yue people was Ganzhili, and the afternoon of the moon in the pure sun of heaven and earth (Book of Changes: Long Zaitian) was regarded as the dragon totem sacrifice day. According to the prehistoric culture of Hemudu site, canoes and wooden paddles were used to cross the sea as early as 7000 years ago (or earlier).

According to experts' research, the precondition of dragon boat race must be in areas rich in rice, rivers and ports, which is the characteristic of southern China. Based on this, it can be speculated that the custom of Dragon Boat Festival may be popular only in the south of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River at first, and then spread to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the northern part of the Central Plains.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Dragon Boat Festival