is coming to Dragon Boat Festival soon, and we can have a great time eating and drinking again. This is a very happy day. In fact, if we follow the original cultural meaning of Dragon Boat Festival, if we send WeChat to others for Dragon Boat Festival blessings, we should write about Dragon Boat Festival health, not a happy Dragon Boat Festival.
This is because Dragon Boat Festival is originally a sad and heavy festival. On the one hand, the ancients believed that May was an evil month, which was very unlucky, full of many taboos, and many things could not be done. The Dragon Boat Festival folk activities such as hanging mugwort and placing a baccarat are all for driving disasters and evil spirits to bless peace.
For example, people in the Han Dynasty believed that in May, you should not build a house, otherwise the owner of the house would become bald, and you would not be able to have money to transplant hair. I really don’t know what the ancients thought. There is also a concept that children cannot be born in May, otherwise the child will be an ominous thing. This really offended a large number of friends born in May.
In this way, the Dragon Boat Festival in ancient times was not fun, so I could only stay at home and hang mugwort and eat rice dumplings.
Second, starting from the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Dragon Boat Festival is believed to be related to the suicide of the famous romantic poet and great patriot Qu Yuan who committed suicide by jumping into the water. People use the dragon boat racing and eating rice dumplings to commemorate the patriot. On such a serious festival, you can't shout and look cheerful.
In short, before , the Dragon Boat Festival was a very serious festival.
After the unification of the Tang Dynasty, the territory expanded, the country was strong, and the culture was prosperous. People no longer cared about those taboos. Driven by the royal family and the people, the Dragon Boat Festival gradually evolved into a festival with the significance of carnival for the whole nation, and people were immersed in an atmosphere of eating, drinking, playing and having fun. In this sense, the Dragon Boat Festival in the Tang Dynasty truly had the cultural significance of the modern Dragon Boat Festival.
So, how did the people of the Tang Dynasty celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival?
Let us travel through history, dream back to the Tang Dynasty, return to Chang'an , and return to the fascinating day of Dragon Boat Festival.
Let’s go to the royal family to have a look first.
The Dragon Boat Festival activities of the royal family are rich and colorful, leading the folk trend, which is called city games and palace games.
The imperial court will hold various grand recreational activities on the Dragon Boat Festival. The emperor, who was usually arrogant, also put down his airs at this time. He wanted to hold a banquet to invite the ministers to drink and have fun.
The Tang Dynasty was a country of poetry. Everyone from emperor to ministers could write poetry. This is the time to show off their talents. Whoever wrote well will give gifts. Because the Dragon Boat Festival is already summer, the emperor usually gives fans. It is said that the famous calligrapher, Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, once wrote the words "phoenix" and "dragon" on the fan and rewarded them to ministers. The minister who got the fan probably got so excited that he couldn't sleep for three days.
In addition to fans, the emperor gives out summer clothes more. This kind of clothes are customized by the palace and are quite high-end. Poet Saint Du Fu was a small official at that time, but he was extremely lucky and received a summer clothes given by the emperor. Du Fu, who was poor all his life, was worried about the country and the people all day long. It is estimated that this day was the happiest time in his life. He wrote a poem like this: "The palace clothes are also famous, and the Dragon Boat Festival is graceful. The fine gua contains soft wind, and the fragrant gua is folded with light snow. The sky is wet, and the summer comes to clear. The meaning is called long and short, and the sacred love will last forever."
Du Fu said that the emperor also wrote his name on the clothes given to him, which made him very grateful. This kind of clothes is very high-end. It is estimated that Du Fu had never seen them before. According to Du Fu's description, this kind of clothes are light and soft, with white fragrance like snow, and it feels very cool when worn.
The ancients believed that tying colorful silk could ward off evil spirits and prolong life, so there is a saying that colorful silk is long-lived. Every year on the Dragon Boat Festival, the people of the Tang Dynasty had to wrap colorful silk on their bodies. Therefore, on the Dragon Boat Festival, the emperor would also give colorful silk to his favorite ministers, and the ministers who got colorful silk would be envious, jealous and hated by their colleagues.
The emperor was drinking and writing poems to celebrate the ministers. He was so happy. So what were the women in the harem doing on the Dragon Boat Festival? Let's go to the emperor's harem.
During the Dragon Boat Festival, there are many fun games in the palace. It is an inherent program to wrap all kinds of rice dumplings. Wear a rope made of beautiful colorful silk threads to drive away disasters and evil spirits. Needless to say, the palace maids also like to play the game of shooting powder. This kind of game is actually to put the wrapped rice dumplings on a plate and shoot them with a special small bow. If they hit them, they will eat them. If they fail to hit them, they will make them. This may also reflect the Tang people's character of Shangwu. Perhaps this kind of game is very fun, and it spread from the palace to the people at once and became a popular game at that time.
In addition to shooting powder balls, the game of fighting Baicao is also popular in the palace.
The game of fighting hundreds of herbs can be divided into literary battles and martial battles. What the literary fight tests is your knowledge of botany and the ability to obtain herbs. The game is probably like this. Both parties have a lot of flowers and plants found in advance. One party reports their own flower names, and the other party reports another flower names. For example, I have cockscombs, and the other party says I have dogtail grass. The cockscombs and dogtails are very appropriate pairs, which are quite a bit of a language game. The game will be over until the flowers and plants in one party are exhausted or the appropriate flowers and plants can no longer be described. The fight is made of straw ropes, wrapped together and pulled each other. When one side of the straw rope is broken, one side declares failure.
This kind of activity of fighting hundreds of herbs was very popular in the Tang Dynasty, and everyone liked it from the elderly to the children. Because this kind of fighting had no knowledge content, it also inspired our fun nature in childhood, so it was very popular in the Tang Dynasty.
On the Dragon Boat Festival, the emperor wanted to give gifts to the ministers, which also attracted the imitation of the people. Therefore, on the Dragon Boat Festival, everyone would give gifts to each other. The royal family is very high-end, but the folk are also very meaningful. Women in the north have to give gifts to their elders early in the morning. They use colorful silk threads to weave into "Five Times Pictures" and "Long Life Wires", and also embroider the shapes of five poisons such as snakes and scorpions to drive away disasters and evil spirits.
also popular among the people. The bellyband is cut into an oval with red cloth and has an embroidered pattern on it. The size of the bellyband just protects the child's abdomen. People also deliberately embroidered patterns of snakes, scorpions or five poisons on their bellybands. I don’t know if children will have nightmares when wearing this bellyband with a horrible pattern. Anyway, people in the Tang Dynasty believed that wearing this can ward off evil and drive away poison.
The early Tang Dynasty was prosperous and stable in the early Tang Dynasty, so on the Dragon Boat Festival, the official will hold a large-scale dragon boat race event. Dragon boat races are usually hosted by mayors from all over the world. The contestants should have a scary tattoo. It is said that this can scare away the dragons in the water. In order to show their tattoos, the contestants usually appear in semi-naked images.
When the dragon boat raced, there were ladies on both sides of the strait, with groups of silk clothes, silver hairpins reflected in the sun, and the viewers were blocked. The scene was quite enthusiastic, and this was definitely a carnival for the whole Tang Dynasty. The prosperous Tang Dynasty liked to hold such large-scale events very much. It is said that the Huainan Jiedushi once held such a dragon boat race in Yangzhou , which cost tens of millions. In the water towns in the south, dragon boat racing is more common. The official requires every village to hold dragon boat racing, and the winner will be rewarded with several pieces of colorful satin, and the colorful satin is provided by the official, which greatly stimulates the development of the southern dragon boat racing activities.
This is the day of the Dragon Boat Festival in the Tang Dynasty. From the many taboos on Dragon Boat Festival to no taboos, the evolution of Dragon Boat Festival also reflects the essence of human pursuit of happiness. After all, only when we are immersed in a festival with fireworks can our lives be full of fun.
