What is Huang Wu on Dragon Boat Festival?
There is a custom of eating Huang Wu during the Dragon Boat Festival in the south of China, and there are other sayings that salted duck eggs can be replaced by soybeans. Legend has it that in The Legend of the White Snake, the White Snake drinks realgar wine, showing its original shape. So people think that snakes, centipedes and other insects can be cracked with realgar wine, and drinking realgar wine during the Dragon Boat Festival can exorcise evil spirits. According to folklore, eating Huang Wu at noon can better exorcise evil spirits.
There is a saying on the Dragon Boat Festival, which is called "May 5th, Three White Days in wuhuang". May is also called May Yellow Moon, so we should eat Huang Wu, boiled water, salted duck egg white and sliced meat during the Dragon Boat Festival. In addition, eating a red refers to amaranth (the local pronunciation is close to "sweat").
The origin of the Dragon Boat Festival
Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional cultural festival popular in China and other countries in the Chinese character cultural circle. It is said that Qu Yuan, a poet of Chu State in the Warring States Period, committed suicide by jumping into the Miluo River on the fifth day of May. Later generations also regard the Dragon Boat Festival as a festival to commemorate Qu Yuan, and there are also sayings to commemorate Wu Zixu, Cao E and Jie Zitui. The origin of the Dragon Boat Festival covers the ancient astrological culture, humanistic philosophy and other aspects, and contains profound and rich cultural connotations. In the process of inheritance and development, a variety of folk customs blend with each other, and the content or details of customs are different due to different regional cultures.
The Dragon Boat Festival, on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, is a folk festival that integrates offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors, praying for evil spirits, celebrating entertainment and eating. The Dragon Boat Festival originated from the worship of natural phenomena and evolved from the ancient Dragon Boat Festival. On midsummer Dragon Boat Festival, the black dragon flies in the south for seven nights, which is in the most positive position in the whole year. As the Book of Changes and Melons said, "The dragon is in the sky." Dragon Boat Festival is an auspicious day for dragons, and dragon and dragon boat culture have been running through the inheritance history of Dragon Boat Festival.
Reference to the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Huang Wu