China - Spring Dragon Festival

China covers a large area and consists of a number of ethnic groups. Different areas and ethnic groups have formed different customs concerning food, clothing, shelter and transport, festivals, courtesies, sacrifices and religion, wedding and funerals. All of these customs have lasted for hundreds of years and have become part of the culture or different areas and ethnic groups. At the same time, some of them become the festivals and customs shared by all the Chinese people and merged into the traditional Chinese culture.

The generation and development of festivals is a course of their shaping, perfecting and their gradual integrating with the social life. It is the result of the social development, which has reached a certain stage. The increasing productive force of the society, the - ever improving conditions of people’s life, the emerge and the frequency of the religious activities have all provided a stage for the emerging and developing of festivals.

Spring Dragon Festival (the dragon lifts its head on the second day of the second lunar month) and of course the second day of the second lunar month is the very date of the festival.

The folklore says that every second day of the second lunar month is the time when the dragon in charge of the rain lifts its head. From that day on, rainfall will gradually increase, so it is called the ‘Spring Dragon Festival’ or ‘Dragon Head Festival’

On every occasion of the Spring Dragon Festival, families in most of the areas in the northern China will go to wells or rivers to fetch water with their lanterns on, in the morning. Then they will come back home and turn the light, burn joss sticks and offer up sacrifices. This ceremony was called ‘attracting the dragon in the field’ in the old times. On this festival, every family should eat noodles, which means ‘lifting the dragon’s head’; fry cakes, which means ‘eating the dragon’s gallbladder’ (the Chinese believe that this holds the courage); and pop corn so that ‘golden beans can blossom; dragon god can return to heaven and distribute the rain to the earth and crops can grow well.’

A story about the origin of the Spring Dragon Festival prevails among people. In the Tang Dynasty, Wu Zetian the queen came to power and became the empress, which irritated Yuhuang Dadi in the heaven. He ordered the four dragons gods who are in charge of the rain not to rain a single drop in three years. However, the dragon god who is in charge of the heaven river couldn’t bear to see people being driven to death, so broke Yuhuang Dadi’s rule and secretly rained once. Yuhuang Dadi became so angry that he kept the dragon god under the mountains as a kind of torture, and the stele on the mountain read as follows:

"The dragon king violates the heavenly rules by dropping rain
And is subject to thousands of years of punishment on earth
If ever he wishes to go back to the heavenly palace
It’s only when golden beans give birth to flowers."

To save the kindhearted dragon god, people went everywhere to find the golden beans. On the second day of the second lunar month the next year, people found the secret of golden beans when they were tedding the seeds of corn: since the corn is just like golden beans, isn’t that the golden beans blossom when the corn is popped? So every family began to pop the corn and set up the altar to offer the blossomed ‘golden beans’ as sacrifices. The dragon lifted his head and saw all this. Knowing that people are trying to rescue him, he cried to Yuhuang Dadi: ‘The golden beans have blossomed, so please set me free!’ Yuhuang Dadi had no choice but to call the dragon god back to heaven and give back his job. From then on, it became a habit that people pop corn on the second day of the second lunar month.

Actually, it is just the characteristic of North China Monsoon that the rainfalls begin to grow after the second day of the second lunar month. However, seen from another perspective, the festival also shows people’s wishes for fine weather and a better harvest.