Illustration about the traditional customs on the Dragon Boat Festival. [Photo/ VCG] 

China has always attached importance to temporal civilization. In the Wei dynasty (220–265 CE), a complete festival temporal system was formed. In the festival sequence with season flow, the Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu in Chinese) on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar is a big festival in summer. There are a variety of customs on the Dragon Boat Festival, so it has many names, e.g. Duanyang, Tianzhong, Tianyi, Caiyao, Yulan, Longzhou, zongzi, Shiren, Doucao, etc, each representing an activity done during the day, such as rice dumpling making, herb picking, boat racing and poems contest. These activities present the extraordinary cultural charms of the Dragon Boat Festival.

From avoiding evils to remembering the ancient sages: The Dragon Boat Festival customs passed down for thousands of years

It is hot and humid in midsummer. Life is not easy for people. During the pre-Qin (c. 1700,000–221 BCE) period and the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), people called the fifth lunar month the "evil month," in which Summer Solstice comes, and called the fifth day of the fifth lunar month the "evil day."

As far as the literature is concerned, the name of Duanwu was given in the Jin dynasty (265–420 CE). Zhou Chu, a scholar in the Jin dynasty, said in Records of Folk Customs: "Duanwu comes in midsummer, when people cook ducks and make zongzi (rice dumpling). Duan means the beginning. Duanwu falls on the fifth day of the fifth month." Duanwu was originally the first wu (literally "noon") day of the midsummer month, that is, the "noon" day of the "noon" month in the lunar calendar. Later generations used numerical calendar system instead of Gan-Zhi System. Thus, "double fifth" (the fifth day of the fifth month) was used instead of the original "double noon," but the name Duanwu was retained.