Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional culture - Dragon Boat Festival, what people do, what they eat and who they commemorate.

Dragon Boat Festival, what people do, what they eat and who they commemorate.

Pay homage to Qu Yuan, row dragon boats, eat zongzi and order wormwood.

Dragon Boat Festival, also called Dragon Boat Festival, is one of the biggest traditional festivals in China. "Duan" means the same as "Chu", and calling "Duan Wu" is just like calling "the fifth day"; The word "five" in the Dragon Boat Festival is also connected with "noon". According to the order of earthly branches, May is "noon" month. Because noon is the "sun", the Dragon Boat Festival is also called "Duanyang". On May 5th, both the month and the day are five, so calling five is also called noon. In addition, there are many nicknames for the Dragon Boat Festival, such as: Summer Festival, Magnolia Festival, Daughter's Day, Tianzhong Festival, Dila Festival, Poet's Day and so on. Many nicknames of the Dragon Boat Festival indirectly explain the differences in the origin of the custom of the Dragon Boat Festival. That's what happened. There are at least four or five theories about the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival, such as: in memory of Qu Yuan; Wuyue's national totem sacrifice theory: From the three generations of summer solstice festival; Evil month and evil day drive away, and so on.

So far, the most influential view on the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival is to commemorate Qu Yuan. In the field of folk culture, China people associate dragon boat racing and eating zongzi with Qu Yuan. It is said that after Qu Yuan jumped into the river, the local people injured him and died, so they set sail to save him because of the custom of horse racing. He also said that people often put food into the water to offer sacrifices to Qu Yuan, but most of the food was eaten by dragons. Later, due to Qu Yuan's suggestion, they wrapped rice in neem leaves, wrapped it in colored silk, and later made it look like zongzi.