Duanwu Festival, one of the four traditional Chinese festivals, takes place on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, and is a folk festival integrating worship of gods and ancestors, praying for blessings and warding off evil spirits, celebratory entertainment and food.
Duanwu Festival, one of the four traditional Chinese festivals, takes place on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, and is a folk festival integrating worship of gods and ancestors, praying for blessings and warding off evil spirits, celebratory entertainment and food.
Duanwu Festival has more than 20 aliases such as Duanyang Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Chongwu Festival, Chongwu Festival, Tianzhong Festival, etc. It is a traditional festival of Han, Shui, Naxi, Tibetan, Yi, Dai, Gelao, Pumi and other ethnic groups.
During the Spring and Autumn period, the custom of celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival was practiced in the Central Plains. The Dragon Boat Festival as a festival was formed in the Han Dynasty.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Ying Shao's “General Meaning of Customs” recorded that on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, people prevented military service and ghosts, as well as preventing diseases and epidemics.
The origin of the Dragon Boat Festival has been described differently from ancient times to the present day, with the main claims being: commemorating Qu Yuan (屈原), welcoming the Tao God (Wu Zixu was transformed into the Tao God after his wrongful death), the Evil Day (恶日), the Festival of Dragons (i.e., sacrificing to the Dragon Totem), and the Summer Solstice.
The origin of the Dragon Boat Festival covers ancient astrological culture, humanistic philosophy, and other aspects, and contains deep and rich cultural connotations, and in the development of the inheritance of a variety of folklore as a whole, and there are differences in the content or details of the customs in various places due to different regional cultures.[77] The origin of the Dragon Boat Festival is also known as the Duanwu Festival.
The main customs of the Dragon Boat Festival include hanging the Zhong Kui statue, avoiding the afternoon, posting the afternoon leaf charm, hanging calamus, mugwort, swimming in a hundred diseases, wearing scented sachets, preparing livestock, dragon boat races, competing in martial arts, batting, swinging, applying xionghuang, drinking xionghuang wine, calamus wine, eating five poisons cake, salted eggs, zongzi, and seasonal fruits, etc. In addition to superstitious activities have gradually disappeared, the rest of the spread to all parts of China and the neighboring countries.
In May 2006, the State Council included the Dragon Boat Festival in the first national list of intangible cultural heritage, and since 2008, the Dragon Boat Festival has been listed as a national legal holiday.[78] In September 2009, UNESCO formally approved the inclusion of the Dragon Boat Festival in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, making the Dragon Boat Festival China's first festival to be inscribed on the world's intangible cultural heritage list.[79] The Dragon Boat Festival has also been inscribed on the World Intangible Heritage List.
