Why do people commemorate Qu Yuan on Dragon Boat Festival?

Because it is said that Qu Yuan, a Chu poet in the Warring States Period, committed suicide by jumping on the Miluo River on May 5th, people later took the Dragon Boat Festival as a festival to commemorate Qu Yuan.

The relationship between Dragon Boat Festival and Qu Yuan;

According to legend, Qu Yuan advocated using talents and empowering people to make them rich, and urged them to unite against Qin, which was strongly opposed by others. Qu Yuan was deposed, expelled from the capital, and exiled to the Yuan and Xiang river basins. During his exile, he wrote poems such as Li Sao, Tian Wen, Jiu Ge and so on, which were concerned about the country and the people. In 278 BC, when Qin Jun invaded Kyoto, Chu, Qu Yuan felt a sharp pain when he saw his motherland being invaded.

But I can't bear to keep giving up my motherland. On May 5th, after writing the masterpiece Huai Sha, I plunged into the Miluo River and wrote a magnificent patriotic movement with my own life. After Qu Yuan threw himself into the river, the local people immediately rowed to rescue him. In order to mourn, people rowed on rivers, and later it gradually developed into a dragon boat race.

People were afraid that fish in the river would eat his body, so they went home and threw rice balls into the river to prevent fish and shrimp from ruining Qu Yuan's body. Later, eating zongzi became a custom. According to documents, the earliest connection between Qu Yuan and the Dragon Boat Festival is the mythical novel Continued Harmony written by Wu Yun, Southern Liang in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, when Qu Yuan has been dead for more than 750 years.

It can be seen from the lost articles copied from Customs Tong in Tang Dynasty (written by Ying Shao at the end of Eastern Han Dynasty) that Qu Yuan was already in the folklore of Dragon Boat Festival when Emperor Gaozu Xu Dong was there, but it has been more than 400 years since Qu Yuan died. Although many Dragon Boat Festival customs have nothing to do with Qu Yuan, Qu Yuan's patriotic spirit and touching poems have been deeply rooted in people's hearts for thousands of years, so people "cherish and mourn it, spread it among people and pass it on from generation to generation".

Therefore, the Dragon Boat Festival is a memorial to Qu Yuan, which has the widest and deepest influence and occupies the mainstream position. In the field of folk culture, China people associate dragon boat racing and eating zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival with commemorating Qu Yuan.

Extended data:

Introduce the origin and influence of Dragon Boat Festival;

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 originated from the worship of astronomical phenomena and evolved from the ancient dragon totem sacrifice. On the midsummer Dragon Boat Festival, the black dragon spent seven nights in the sky, which is the day of the dragonfly. As the fifth poem in The Book of Changes and the Melon says, "The dragon is in the sky".

During the Dragon Boat Festival, Longxing was both "successful" and "correct" and was in a favorable position. Enshi was once popular, and Lund was outstanding. The origin of the Dragon Boat Festival covers the ancient astrological culture, humanistic philosophy and other aspects, and contains profound and rich cultural connotations. In the process of inheritance and development, a variety of folk customs are integrated, and festival customs are rich in content. Picking dragon boats and eating zongzi are two major customs of the Dragon Boat Festival, which have been passed down in China since ancient times and have never stopped.

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 ancestors of Baiyue in the south who chose "Dragon Ascending to Heaven" as an auspicious day to worship their ancestors, and injected the seasonal fashion of "eliminating diseases and preventing epidemics" in summer.

The Dragon Boat Festival, regarded as "bad month and bad day", began in the northern part of the Central Plains and was attached 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. Dragon Boat Festival, Spring Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day and Mid-Autumn Festival are also called the four traditional festivals in China. Dragon Boat Festival culture has a wide influence in the world, and some countries and regions in the world also celebrate it.

In May 2006, the State Council listed it in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list; Since 2008, it has been listed as a national statutory holiday. In September, 2009, UNESCO officially approved its inclusion in the representative list of intangible cultural heritage of mankind, and the Dragon Boat Festival became the first festival in China to be selected as a world intangible heritage.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Dragon Boat Festival (one of the four traditional festivals in China)