Traditional folk festival: Cotton’s birthday on the 28th day of the first lunar month?

Cotton is one of the most important crops in the world. It can be made into fabrics of various specifications. It is an important item to keep out the cold and is also an important nectar plant.

In addition, cotton wadding can be used as a raw material for making gunpowder and rayon; cotton seeds can be used as feed; cotton oil can be used to make food. It can be said that cotton is a treasure.

Today’s traditional festival will introduce you to the folk festival in Tieling, Liaoning Province - Cotton Birthday.

Cotton's Birthday is a traditional agricultural festival among the Han people in Tieling, Liaoning Province. It falls on the 28th day of the first lunar month every year. According to legend, this day is Cotton's birthday.

The local Han people held a celebration ceremony to divine the cotton harvest of that year. The method was to throw a thorn basket on the house. After it settled, if the mouth of the basket was facing up, it would indicate a good cotton harvest that year. If the mouth of the basket was facing down, it would mean a poor cotton harvest that year.

As the saying goes, "If you don't accept flowers, look at the twenty-eighth day of the first lunar month." Regarding Cotton's birthday, there is another saying that it is on the twentieth day of the seventh lunar month, and another one says it is the twentieth day of the first lunar month. These two opinions are in Wudi.

, that is, it is spread in Jiangsu today. Local people believe that it is forbidden to rain on this day, otherwise "cotton will not be sold in the shop" and the harvest will be poor.

Kapok, the spread cotton in China, is also called Gubei, Jibei, Guzhong.

In the Brahma Book, it is called Vayva, and it is also called Garava Kalpa.

Cotton has been recorded in classics for a long time.

It was originally produced in India and was introduced to China for cultivation in the Tang Dynasty. There were many sentences about kapok in the poems of the Tang Dynasty, which shows that there was no shortage of cotton cultivation in the Central Plains at that time.

From the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, my country's foreign trade became increasingly prosperous, and Guangzhou was especially an important port to the sea. Therefore, cotton seeds began to spread to the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong, and they multiplied and spread. People, regardless of whether they were rich or poor, far and near, invested in planting and profited from it.