Plague Thinking and Life Care: The Legend of the Dragon Boat Festival along the Yellow River

From the perspective of festival traceability, the Dragon Boat Festival is actually a product of the Yellow River culture. In the areas along the Yellow River, there are still a large number of legends about the Dragon Boat Festival, which show the cultural style different from Jingchu and Wuyue, continue the cultural thinking and life care of people at the time node of "Dragon Boat Festival" in the pre-Qin period, and show the "root" color of the Yellow River culture.

Preventing evil and poisonous aggression is the basic feature of all kinds of customs and behaviors of the Dragon Boat Festival in traditional society. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty: "On the fifth day of May, the five-color seal (i.e., the peach seal) of Zhu Suo was decorated as a portal to make it difficult to stop the evil qi. The Dragon Boat Festival is regarded as the "evil moon and evil day", and "evil" is the root cause of the dragon boat festival and its customs, which is essentially the heat of the climate and the human diseases caused by it. The time of the Dragon Boat Festival is around the summer solstice, the weather is humid and hot, it is the onset and epidemic period of various epidemics, so the ancients warned: "It is the moon, the day is long, the yin and yang are fighting, and the death and life are divided." If a gentleman fasts, he will hide his desire to be quiet and restless, to stop his voice, to be silent, to be silent, to be silent, to be quiet, to be silent, to be quiet, to be silent, to be quiet However, in the process of social dissemination, "evil" is associated with mysterious images such as evil ghosts and evil gods. In folklore along the Yellow River, people focus on the "danger" of this time, which is actually a narration of the root meaning of the Dragon Boat Festival.

The legend of the Dragon Boat Festival along the Yellow River contains the cultural reflections of traditional civil society on the origins of epidemics. In folklore, the Dragon Boat Festival is also a "dangerous" day, because on this day the plague god will descend to the human world, if unfortunately bumped, it will be infected with disease or even life, in the legend about the Dragon Boat Festival, it describes the Jade Emperor sent the plague god to the human world, the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, "only to see a black smoke floating in the sky, slowly spreading, spreading to the village." It wasn't long before those who wasted food felt dizzy, feverish and vomiting, bedridden, and many people were killed by the black smoke." "Black smoke" is the symbol of the plague god. In folklore, the production of plagues is associated with the gods. But why does God want to unleash disease on earth? Many folklore attribute it to the "bad" behavior of human beings themselves, one of the prominent points is the waste of grain, which is related to "food": the human world is full of grain, the grain warehouse is full, people live richly, many people therefore "forget the thousand-year hunger for a full meal, no longer feel sorry for the grain", after the Jade Emperor who patrolled the human world saw it, he ordered the plague god to punish mankind.

In folklore, the plague is also caused by the bad heart of the people, which is related to "virtue". Wasting grain is naturally an immoral behavior, but in folklore, this "virtue" also includes other aspects, such as the legend that the plague descended from heaven because "the people in the world are not good" and "there are too many bad people in the world", and the reason why the Jade Emperor sent down the plague was not only human waste and waste of grain, but also the evil deeds of "beating the old man and discarding the baby". Folklore links the emergence of plague with human social behavior, moralizes the causes of plague, reflects the influence of the traditional concept of retribution of good and evil on folklore, and also involves the problems of epidemics and moral construction and social order.

In fact, not only is the origin of the plague ethicalized and moralized, but the avoidance and protection of the plague is often moralized. As a simple time node, the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar is no different from other months and days, but in the literature and public perceptions, it is ethical, regarded as the "evil moon and evil day", this ethical tendency continues in civil society, and accumulates and circulates in contemporary Dragon Boat Festival folklore. Legend has it that people do good deeds and be good people to escape the plague. For example, Taibai Venus found that not all people wasted food, and there were many good people who not only cherished food, but were also very kind and helpful, so he took the initiative to tell those good people the time of the arrival of the plague god and the way to protect against the disease.

Of course, in the folklore of the Dragon Boat Festival along the Yellow River, the "methods" of plague protection described by people do not all rely on good deeds, and the "evil" faced is not only plague. In some legends, people pin their hopes for the treatment of epidemics on water, such as the legend of bingling temple medicinal water spring, the geographer Li Daoyuan who went to the temple to investigate was infected with the disease, he accidentally found a spring water, after drinking the spring water, suddenly felt that his condition improved. The legend of Tiger Wolf Pass tells: "Every Dragon Boat Festival, the Yaoshui Gorge is crowded with people, and people help the old and the young, and run to bathe in the medicinal water to pray for disaster relief and prosperity." "Epidemics sometimes turn into demons and wantonly invade people's lives, but people eventually use their good deeds to avoid or even defeat demons, such as in the legend of the Five Sacrifice Festivals at the beginning of May, on the day when the Five Devil Kings slaughtered the village at the beginning of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, the old Tibetan aunt Xinmu Tsoji touched the murderous Demon King with her benevolence and charity, saved herself and her two sons, and also saved a large number of clansmen. Although different legends have different ways of avoiding or treating diseases, they all express the same expectation: resisting the plague, staying healthy, and having the vitality of life, which includes both people's care for individual health and simple thinking about the value of life, that is, healthy life that can resist the plague should also be good. This is an ethical and moralized care for life, which contains the simple pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty by civil society.

Author: Mei Dongwei Chen Dongze

Source: China Art News