Dragon Boat Festival
01 · Historical Records
Dao County was called Daozhou in ancient times, and the custom of racing dragon boats at Duanwu has long held sway in the rice-growing region of southern Hunan. The records in the old local gazetteers of watching the racing spectacle on the fifth day of the fifth month and the dragon boat gathering on the eighteenth broadly match the timing used in the county today, where work on the dragon boats begins one month before the festival; the custom of sending off the plague is found in records of welcoming the gods and sending off the sages from former times. The differentiation of dragon head forms and colors is tied to the ancestral temples, gates, and towers of villages and lineages, showing that the dragon boat is not the possession of a single village but a marker of identity among lineages, and its formal differences became fixed as clans divided and households established themselves.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Daozhou dragon boat custom is the collective name for a series of folk activities held spontaneously by the civil society of Dao County, Yongzhou City, Hunan Province, mainly at each year's Duanwu Festival. With villages and lineages as its main body, and with boat-building, dragon-head carving, the launching of the dragon boats, and racing as its main threads, it integrates a large body of folk life and cultural content, including interpersonal interaction, festival celebration, belief, ritual, craft techniques, athletic competition, herbal medicine, food, and folk legend. The dragon boat activities of the Duanwu period usually begin one month before the festival and end with the Duanwu dragon boat race. The Daozhou dragon boat has a complete set of rites, including "stealing" the keel tree, jia ma (raising the scaffold), dao ma (lowering the scaffold), le long (delighting the dragon — welcoming the new dragon head), consecration and eye-dotting, appeasing Taisui, dian jun (rowing the dry dragon boat), striking the plowshare fire, sending off the plague, and rowing the yin dragon boat (entering the water at night to sacrifice to Qu Yuan and pray for peace). The Daozhou dragon boat has rich cultural significance. Through its system of distinguishing dragon head forms and colors, and through the cultural contexts of related beliefs, legends, rituals, and family interaction, it quite typically reflects cultural information on rice farming and lineage in southern Hunan over the course of long historical development, and it also preserves ancient southern Hunan customs such as sacrificing to Qu Yuan at Duanwu, worshipping water gods, and honoring Emperor Shun. The Daozhou dragon boat has a prominent social function. Whether within villages and families or between villages and families, the Daozhou dragon boat plays a role in adjusting and binding local society. Especially today, under the active regulation and guidance of local government, the Daozhou dragon boat plays an even more positive role in building a harmonious local society. At the same time, dragon boat activities not only strengthen the body but temper the will; they have cultivated the character and spirit of the people of Dao County — brave and bold, united in mutual help, indomitable, and eager to be first.
Stealing the polewood and raising the stand
The keel timber comes from designated woods by established right; a stand is raised to receive it and tested before anything else is begun.
Welcoming the new head and its consecration
The new head is welcomed into the village and then consecrated with a Taoist rite, for a dragon whose eyes are opened will know its way.
The dry run and the ploughshare fire
The boat is run on dry land before it ever touches water, then a ploughshare fire lights the way while the village follows with drums.
Sending the plague and the night crossing
At night the boat goes out to bury the plague and pray for safety, silently and without fire, returning before dawn.
Thirteen dragon heads and village identity
Heads fall into four great types and thirteen forms, each bound to a village shrine and its legend; the boat announces which clan is in the race.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Daozhou dragon boat custom is a mass, group-transmitted folk activity, concentrated in more than forty administrative villages across the "five towns and five townships" around the county seat, with a long history. The Daozhou dragon boat has very distinctive features. First, its popular base is deep: local people set great store by dragon boat activities, and beyond their being held spontaneously by the people, the surrounding "five towns and five townships" all come to take part. Second, the dragon head forms and colors are varied, falling into four major categories — dragon, tiger, phoenix, and qilin — and further subdivided into thirteen types according to differences in lacquer color and form; the various dragon heads are associated with the ancestral temples, gates, towers, and legends of the corresponding villages and lineages, becoming signs of mutual recognition and distinction among different villages and lineages. Third, the ritual space is complete. Fourth, interpersonal interaction is rich: within villages there is unity and cooperation, while between villages there is friendly mutual help, with neighbors greeting one another and exchanging courtesies throughout the completion of new boats, their trial launches, travel to the races, and the racing itself. Fifth, the figures commemorated are multiple, including Qu Yuan, Zhou Dunyi, and others.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Daozhou dragon boat takes villages and lineages as its main body, with extremely broad popular participation: the more than forty villages of the five towns and five townships around the county seat organize it spontaneously, and the differing dragon head forms and colors of each village form a rare cluster of village folk markers. In recent years the locality has combined regulation with guidance, both preserving the ritual space and village identity and turning the old mutually exclusive scrambles for water into safe and orderly competition. The rites involve herbal medicine, food, and legend, connecting with the daily livelihood of the villages, so the foundation for transmission is firmer than in other projects.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Tan Guozheng 05-2970
- Liu Guisheng 05-2971
- Xiang Fuchang
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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