Personal experience of Dragon Boat Festival customs: Wear fragrant sachets, insert mugwort at the door, smoke the house, and apply realgar wine to ears and nose
The Dragon Boat Festival in the past was also a hygiene festival. This can be proved from the sentence recorded in Wu Zimu's "Dream Liang Lu" in the Song Dynasty,"May 5th, the sky is in the middle of the day, and the white tongue is wiped out." The Dragon Boat Festival folk customs that I personally experienced as a child include the following: 1. Putting moxa on the door. "Mencius" says: "Seven years of illness require three years of mourning." It can be seen that China people have known the medicinal value of moxa for a long time. Therefore, every Dragon Boat Festival, every household inserts mugwort on the door to avoid evil spirits. In fact, the roots, stems and leaves of mugwort all contain tannins and volatile oils, and its smell can drive away pests. In the past, every summer, people would twist mugwort into plaits, dry it, and light it at night to use it to drive away mosquitoes. Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty recorded in his "Compendium of Materia Medica":"Ai can be used to treat all diseases and stop insects." It is a necessary medicine for traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture. Moxibustion involves kneading the mugwort leaf into a pill with the tip on the top and the bottom flat on the bottom, placing ginger slices or garlic slices on the bottom, placing them on the acupuncture points and igniting them, allowing the hot air to penetrate the acupuncture points to achieve the curative effect. According to modern scientific analysis, mugwort belongs to the Compositae plant and can treat hematemesis, abdominal pain and other diseases.
2. Apply realgar wine to your ears and nose. The well-known "The Legend of the White Snake" tells us that realgar wine can ward off insects and snakes. Realgar wine is arsenic sulfide and has a disinfectant effect. When I was a child, my father would rub realgar wine on the ears and noses of the whole family every Dragon Boat Festival. Because the children were sleepy, he didn't know it. When he woke up the next morning, the brothers pointed at each other and made fun of each other, which made a deep impression.
3. Wear a sachet. In the old days, every few days before the Dragon Boat Festival, various Chinese medicine shops would grind angelica root, agastole, cypress, calamus, atractylodes and other medicines into fine powder and sell them. Because Angelica dahurica can dispel wind, eliminate dampness, reduce swelling, and relieve pain; Pogostella can cool, strengthen the stomach, and relieve fever; Cyperus is a channel, antispasmodic, and stomach-strengthening agent; Acorus can detoxify and treat wind-cold-dampness arthralgia; Rhizoma Atractylodis sweating and strengthening the stomach can cure sore and ringworm, and they all have fragrance. Before the Dragon Boat Festival, many families bought the above medicinal powder from pharmacies. Women used various silk to make sachets of different colors and shapes to wear on their bodies and waists.
3. Smoke the house. In the old days, every Dragon Boat Festival, most families would clean their houses and then use mugwort, calamus, and atractylodes rhizome to light and smoke them. This is very helpful in eliminating mosquitoes and flies.
4. Eat rice dumplings, fried dough sticks, and sugar cakes, and give gifts to each other. In particular, newlyweds must carry a basket of fried dough sticks, sugar cakes, oil wedges, etc. and return to their parents 'parents. This is called "Wangxia".
Most of the above are customs that attach importance to hygiene, but now they seem to have been ignored. It seems that only the customs of eating rice dumplings and eating food such as corn dumplings and sugar cakes are left. I believe that those customs with sanitary significance should be restored and the auspicious noon festival should be regarded as a sanitary festival, so as to meet the intention and requirements of the formation of ancient customs.