What to eat on Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat Festival is in the fifth month of the lunar calendar, which is usually the beginning of summer. During the Dragon Boat Festival, people have many traditional activities to perform. Not only do they hang mugwort in front of their doors, but they also use golden leaves to drive away mosquitoes in their homes. But the most important thing is that the Dragon Boat Festival, as a traditional festival, should be a festival for family reunion. The food we eat during the reunion is very important, so what kind of food should we eat during the Dragon Boat Festival?

What to eat on Dragon Boat Festival

1. Eat peaches, eggplants and beans

According to Taiwanese folklore, eating peaches, eggplants, and green beans during the Dragon Boat Festival can help you stay healthy and grow taller. As the saying goes, "Eat eggplants until you shake, and eat beans until you grow old." The Hakka people in Miaoli also eat eggplants, long beans, peaches and plums during the Dragon Boat Festival.

But the meaning of these foods is different from that of southerners. Eating seeds certainly means taking advantage of their growth, while eating plums symbolizes the reproduction of offspring. Some people also believe that it can prevent heatstroke. Eating long beans is to avoid being bitten by snakes (because long beans are shaped like snakes).

Eating eggplants during the Dragon Boat Festival can prevent mosquito bites (because eggplant is called "diaocai" in Hakka, and "咬" is pronounced as "ㄉ一ㄠ" in local dialect, so we took its homonym).

2. Eat garlic eggs

On the Dragon Boat Festival in rural areas of Henan, Zhejiang and other provinces, housewives get up especially early and cook the garlic and eggs prepared in advance together for the family to eat for breakfast. In some places, people also put a few pieces of mugwort leaves when cooking garlic and eggs.

Eating garlic, eggs and fried buns for breakfast is said to avoid the "five poisons" and is good for health.

3. Eat mugwort steamed buns

In many places, people use fermented rice flour or flour and mugwort to steam steamed buns during the Dragon Boat Festival.

Mugwort contains a variety of volatile oils with an aromatic smell. It can repel insects and kill bacteria, and it has an inhibitory effect on a variety of bacteria and certain skin fungi. Therefore, in ancient times, mugwort was indispensable for getting rid of diseases and plagues during the Dragon Boat Festival, whether eaten or used.

4. Eat tea eggs

In Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, my country, every family would cook tea eggs and salt water eggs to eat during the Dragon Boat Festival every year. Boiled eggs include chicken eggs, duck eggs, and goose eggs.

The eggshells are painted red, put into colorful net bags, and hung around children's necks, which means to wish the children good luck and safety.

5. Eat the "Five Reds"

In Yangzhou's traditional customs, in addition to eating rice dumplings on the Dragon Boat Festival, people also eat the "five reds" - roast duck, amaranth, duck eggs, lobster, yellow croaker or yellow eel - so that they can ward off evil spirits and cool down throughout the summer.

During the Dragon Boat Festival, red amaranth is indispensable on the dinner table; there must also be red-heart salted duck, whose eggs are not expensive; and realgar, which turns orange after being soaked in wine, is also indispensable;

Buy some river shrimps, and after frying them in oil, the shrimp shells will be bright red. When roast duck is on the market, it doesn’t cost much to go to a duck shop and chop off a breast or a leg (1/4 of a duck). Therefore, the so-called "five reds" have become a must-have on the Dragon Boat Festival table.

6. Roll and eat chicken, duck and goose eggs

It is popular all over the country. On the morning of the Dragon Boat Festival, in the Northeast, the elders will roll boiled chicken, duck, and goose eggs on children's stomachs, then peel the skin and let the children eat them. It is said that this can prevent children from having stomachaches, but it is actually a children's game during the festival.

In other areas, cooking is the main practice. It is said that the original intention was to throw Qu Yuan into the river to feed fish and shrimp in order to save his body from being harmed by fish and shrimp. Later, it evolved into cooking as a memorial.