Wenzhou Dragon Boat Festival is a 20-year-old traditional custom, and dragon boat activities are generally held on the Dragon Boat Festival. According to Ming Wanli's Wenzhou County Records, the competition began with Gou Jian, the king of Yue. Yongjia water town is used for praying for dragon boat races, and Wenzhou dragon boat races became very popular at the latest in the Song Dynasty. Ye Shishi: "One village, one ship, one country, flying with flags everywhere, praying for the annual competition will follow its customs, and it will be cool if it is banned." It can be seen that the ethnic groups in Wenzhou originated from the ritual activities of the totem worship of the ancient Yuelong, which was mainly used to pray for peace and harvest.
Dragon bows are almost everywhere. Some painted dragon forest on the hull, and the movable dragon tail was placed at the head and tail, which was small in shape. Some drew several dragon forests on the hull, and they were headless and tailless, but they were large in shape. Dragon boats in every township have their own flags with fixed colors. If there are several dragon boats in a township, flags should also be used to distinguish the signs.
Take the ancient custom of Nantang River in the southern suburbs of Wenzhou as an example. Some flags are blue, and the dragon head, tail and hull are all blue, which is called "Qinglong". According to legend, among the four directions, only the seven houses of the East Black Dragon are called dragons, so green is a positive color. This Nantang River is dominated by Shencheng, so the dragon boat in the Tang Temple in Shencheng East is particularly large, with 16 stalls and 44 people on board, named Daqing, which is regarded as the dragon mother.
The custom of dragon boat:
The residents in Yueqing who take part in dragon boating are called "Dragon Lake", and a group in Dragon Lake is called "Dragon Bell", and the location of the dragon bell is called "Dragon Bottom". Some natural villages are even divided into independent units to hold some public welfare undertakings or undertake some social obligations. Every year, there is a leader of the waterspout rowing boat, commonly known as "the first thing" or "the first family", who is selected by the waterspouts in turn or by lottery.
In the name of waterspouts, congratulations to all waterspouts on their weddings, the birth of the first boy, the building of a house and promotion, and the graduation of universities and middle schools after the abolition of the imperial examination. If you want to congratulate, you should tie a HongLing or red cloth on the "Dragon Neck", which is called "hanging red" as the saying goes, as well as "incense gold" and food gifts. In the old society, some hoses often illegally cut down camphor trees or stole the longest Chinese fir in the "tree temple" (wooden line), which led to litigation disputes. In the west of Yueqing County, there are several dragon boats in Nature Village, which are called "Ten Dragons in the Land Group" or "Seven Dragons in the South House".
For example, there is a small hidden lake in Baishi Town, Yueqing. On this day every year, more than 100 dragon boats meet and compete in the whole area, and a flag is prepared to reward the winners. Men, women and children were crowded with spectators. Some areas, such as Cocoon in Ryan, don't have their own dragon boats. Before the Dragon Boat Festival, the transport vessels on the river were detained and twisted into dragon boats with cables. However, in Wenzhou, which is located in mountainous and semi-mountainous areas, there are many dry lands, few paddy fields, no river ports and no custom of rowing dragon boats on the Dragon Boat Festival.