The Dragon Boat Festival custom in Chengdu

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 Race is very popular in the southern coastal areas of China, which is deeply loved by people all over the world and has 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.

Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional festival of the Chinese nation. It not only clearly records the colorful social life and cultural content of our ancestors, but also accumulates profound historical and cultural connotations. Every Dragon Boat Festival, all kinds of celebrations will be held all over the country, filled with festive atmosphere, lively and festive. As the ballad goes, "May 5th is Duanyang; Eat zongzi and hang sachets; The door is full of incense; The dragon boat is in the water. "

The content of the Dragon Boat Festival custom is rich and colorful, and the content or details of the custom are different in different parts of the country due to different regional cultures. These festivals and customs revolve around the Dragon Boat Festival, Blessing Festival, Fighting Disaster Festival and other forms, and place people's desire to welcome good luck, ward off evil spirits and eliminate disasters. Traditional festival ceremonies and related custom activities are important contents of festival elements. Performing various traditional folk activities during the Dragon Boat Festival can not only enrich people's spiritual and cultural life, but also inherit and carry forward traditional culture.

The two symbolic customs of the Dragon Boat Festival are picking dragon boats and eating zongzi. According to the textual research of Mr. Wen Yiduo in his thesis "Dragon Boat Festival Examination" and "Dragon Boat Festival History Education" (see Wen Yiduo's complete works), it is believed that the ancestors took "dragon" as a totem and held a grand totem sacrifice every year. One of the activities is to depict a dragon-shaped canoe in the drums, to compete on the water to sacrifice the dragon god, and to have fun with games. This is the origin of the custom of dragon boat racing.