This year, the Dragon Boat Festival and Children's Day are both on the weekend! On one side is the hardcore folk custom of "Five Poisons Go Away", and on the other side is the childlike critique of "Happiness Is No Crime" - who can conquer your child? It's time to review "Calabash Brothers", after all, many characters in it are related to the "Five Poisons".
In fact, the Dragon Boat Festival is not just about eating rice dumplings and dragon boat racing. The ancients also staged a drama to fight against the "Five Poisonous Creatures" on this day.
The biggest villains in "Huluwa", the Golden Snake Demon and the Scorpion Demon.
The centipede demon and the toad demon are also important supporting characters.
Gecko, rarely seen.
The fifth day of the fifth lunar month was considered an "evil month and an evil day" - it was hot and humid, poisonous insects bred, and plagues were prone to occur (the "Jingchu Sui Shi Ji" records: "May is commonly known as the evil month, and many prohibitions are imposed"). Therefore, the ancients used art to create China's earliest "public health visual system."
The custom of the five poisons reflects the ecological wisdom of the ancients - by observing the laws of nature, strengthening health protection during the peak period of insect-borne diseases (such as using realgar to drive away snakes and using wormwood to fumigate mosquitoes). Although people are no longer afraid of the five poisons today, their cultural symbols are still preserved in the form of art, becoming a unique memory point of the Dragon Boat Festival.
"Playing with Babies on Dragon Boat Festival" by Su Zhuo of Song Dynasty
This painting, "Playing with Babies on the Dragon Boat Festival" from the National Palace Museum in Taipei, depicts three babies, one of whom has a toad tied to his right hand (one of the five poisonous creatures) and holds a pair of pomegranates on a branch in his left hand (one of the five auspicious animals, which will be introduced below), playing with another child. Their faces are round and cute, the brushwork is steady, and the colors are pure and elegant.
"Dragon Boat Festival" (partial) by Luo Pin, Qing Dynasty
These seemingly scary snake, scorpion and centipede patterns are actually the perfect combination of survival wisdom and artistic genius.
Let us uncover the cultural codes behind these "horror patterns".
Five poisonous creatures: the ancients' "list of dangerous creatures"
In traditional Chinese culture, the "Five Poisons" is an important folk concept, which not only has the color of nature worship, but also contains the wisdom of exorcising evil and avoiding epidemics. This "list of dangerous creatures" is not a random list, and each member has "special skills".
There are five generally recognized core members: snakes (representing venom attacks), scorpions (the sting of their tails is deadly), centipedes (multiple legs are highly poisonous), geckos (the ancients mistakenly believed that their urine was poisonous), and toads/spiders (there are differences in different regions, with toads often included in the north and spiders instead in the south).
The art of the five poisons is actually the "public health poster" of the ancients. Its scientific core is "realgar wine drives away snakes, and calamus fumigates mosquitoes."
Images have uncontrollable emotional potential and can memorize content that cannot be processed in words. These seemingly exaggerated artistic treatments are actually the ancients’ clever way of encoding public health knowledge into visual symbols.
Exorcism through art: the magical transformation from fear to creativity
But there is also a layer of contradictory aesthetics hidden in this - both fear and admiration, using art to "seal" poisonous insects (for example, embroidering a scorpion on a bellyband means "the poison will not penetrate the body").
"Dragon Boat Festival Scenery Scroll" by Fang Shishu of the Qing Dynasty
Fang Shishu of the Qing Dynasty played a trick of "turning black into pink" in his "Dragon Boat Festival Scenery Scroll", innovatively juxtaposing mugwort with red snakes, toads, and poisonous bees, and using meticulous brushwork to present the theme of "eliminating disease and poison". The image of the toad with its head held high and eyes wide open is particularly prominent. The addition of this animal theme reflects the absorption of folk beliefs in the "Noon Auspicious Picture" in the mid-Qing Dynasty - although the toad is one of the five poisonous animals, it has medicinal value (treating malnutrition and rabies), turning it into a symbol of auspiciousness.
Folk New Year Pictures
Suzhou Taohuawu New Year paintings are even more amazing, with the "Five Poisons on the Tongue" being performed, which can be regarded as the ancient version of the food safety poster.
Memory Encoding: The “Cultural DNA” of Dragon Boat Festival Art
Why can these "horror patterns" be passed down for thousands of years? Because they are implanted in the Chinese people's "cultural operating system".
When you see the five poisonous creatures pattern, don’t forget - this may be mankind’s earliest “public health visual system”, a national epidemic prevention art movement that has lasted for two thousand years.
【Symbol curing procedure】
Wang Shimin of the Qing Dynasty: "Dragon Boat Festival Scroll"
The "Five Auspicious Plants" (usually calamus, mugwort, pomegranate flowers, hollyhocks, garlic, and sometimes gardenia) are a plant system that suppresses the "Five Poisons" and form a stable combination in the works of painters such as Guo Siqin and Wang Shimin.
The combination of "mugwort + calamus" painted by Ren Bonian and Qi Baishi is like today's brand logo, and you can tell it is the Dragon Boat Festival at first sight.
Ren Bonian of the Qing Dynasty: The Dragon Boat Festival
Ren Bonian's "Dragon Boat Festival" uses boneless painting method to depict Dragon Boat Festival elements such as mugwort, calamus, hollyhock, loquat, garlic, and mandarin fish.
Ming Dynasty Chen Gao's "Dragon Boat Festival Scenery"
There are also works depicting seasonal plants of the Dragon Boat Festival, such as daylilies, hollyhocks, and pomegranates. Chen Gao's "Dragon Boat Festival Scene" uses lake rocks as the background, with floral elements interspersed among them.
"Noon Auspicious Picture" by Lang Shining of the Qing Dynasty
Lang Shining's "Wu Rui Tu" is a combination of Chinese and Western styles, using Western still life style to display rice dumplings, becoming an anchor point for cross-cultural memory.
Emotional Arousal Mode
It can be said that the inclusion of calamus, mugwort, pomegranate flowers, hollyhocks, garlic and other plants that ward off evil spirits during the Dragon Boat Festival shows that the artist participated in the revision and inheritance of symbolic traditions through brush and ink experiments. This intergenerational transmission of patterns has given the memory of the Dragon Boat Festival cultural continuity.
Xu Yang's "Dragon Boat Festival Story Picture Album" (Eight-page) "Hanging Mugwort Man"
"Wrapped Corn"
“Watching the Dragon Boat Race”
The Qing Dynasty's "Dragon Boat Festival Story Album" uses eight paintings to create a custom flow chart, which can be called an ancient version of the "festival guide". It records the customs of shooting powder balls, hanging mugwort figurines, wrapping rice dumplings, and watching dragon boat races. The "shooting powder balls" game is said to have originated from the palace during the Dragon Boat Festival in the Tang Dynasty: peel off a few yellow rice dumplings soaked in mugwort juice, cut them into small pieces and put them on a lacquer plate, and let the guests shoot the powder balls with special small bows and arrows, and those who shoot them get to eat.
Works like "Dragon Boat Race" not only record the competition, but also create a collective carnival space.
"Dragon Boat Race" (partial) Yuan Dynasty Anonymous
Dragon boat races on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. "May" in the Twelve Months of the Lunar Calendar, by an anonymous Qing dynasty artist
Today, we no longer fear the five poisons, but we still reproduce them through art - perhaps because humans always need a concrete carrier to house the collective memory of unknown risks.