Six Dragon Boat Festival traditions you may not know—turns out visiting the maternal home to avoid the festival is one of them!

Tiger Night Flower

Aside from going out during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, you can also do some fun activities at home with your kids to learn about related customs. The Dragon Boat Festival falls when the weather starts to get hot, and the sunny weather lifts everyone’s mood. But beyond eating zongzi and wearing sachets, there are more things to be mindful of. As the days get hotter, help protect your family from summer bugs and viruses!

The maternal home. Traditionally, the fifth lunar month is considered an “evil month,” during which many things require caution and taboos must be avoided. Bringing daughters back home to celebrate the festival during the Dragon Boat Festival carries the meaning of avoiding misfortune and disaster. However, if you’re pregnant, timing your return home to avoid the festival might need extra consideration. Noon is when all things are most active—including legendary “poisonous creatures”—which could harm pregnant moms and their babies. Therefore, there’s a custom that pregnant women should stay indoors at noon during the Dragon Boat Festival.
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The “Five Poisons” refer to snakes, centipedes, toads, scorpions, and spiders—in this context, they represent the bugs and insects active in the heat. The Dragon Boat Festival falls during hot, dry weather when snakes and insects breed and are more likely to bite. People would gather medicinal herbs, insert grass, and sprinkle realgar wine to drive away poison and evil. Though it may seem superstitious, from a modern scientific perspective, the use of herbs helps repel insects and prevent bites that could spread disease, while cleaning helps tidy up the environment, maintain hygiene, and keep living spaces dry. Beyond cleaning, tradition also includes cutting out paper images of the Five Poisons and posting them around the home or tying them onto children’s wrists. Over time, the designs have evolved in countless creative ways—why not try paper-cutting or origami with your little ones at home and see who comes up with the most imaginative design?

“Draw well water at noon on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month to bathe, and you’ll be free from epidemic qi all year.” It’s said that the well water drawn at noon on the Dragon Boat Festival has the power to counteract all poisons, drive away evil, and cure illnesses. Water stored in containers from that time is believed to last a long time, called “noon water” or “yin-yang water.” In the past, there was a custom of “drawing noon well water,” but nowadays, with tap water available in every household, the spectacle of people lining up to draw water from wells is a thing of the past.

Even so, with the muggy heat of the Dragon Boat Festival, cooling off with a fun water fight with the kids can be entertaining. However, no matter how magical the legends about noon water may be, it’s best to avoid letting kids drink unboiled water, and there’s no need to actually store a whole vat of noon water at home. Setting aside whether it’s effective or not, the stagnant water could easily attract mosquitoes!
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There’s a tradition of drinking realgar wine to ward off evil. If there are children at home who can’t drink alcohol, a small amount of realgar wine can be dabbed on their forehead to draw a “king” character as a substitute. Nowadays, realgar wine is less commonly used, and what’s more readily found in traditional markets is mugwort. Moms can wash and boil it, then use it to bathe their children or sprinkle it around the home, which also carries the meaning of driving away evil. On this day, people also hang calamus at the door, symbolizing the warding off of evil and misfortune, while mugwort is believed to invite blessings and prevent illness.

Wearing sachets isn’t just for kids—it’s a tradition meant to repel mosquitoes. Small cloth bags are filled with mosquito-repelling herbs and worn on the body. Different genders and age groups have representative patterns and meanings. For example, flower-and-bird shapes are often worn by girls, symbolizing intelligence and beauty; boys wear tiger-shaped sachets; and the elderly, to prevent illness and maintain health, usually prefer plum blossom or chrysanthemum designs. These days, there are even more styles, and for convenience in making them, artificial fragrances are often used instead of actual mosquito-repelling herbs. Families with young children are advised to buy fillings from traditional Chinese medicine shops themselves, to avoid excessive inhalation that could irritate the respiratory tract.
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