The Dragon-Head-Raising
Festival is also known as 龙抬头long2 tai2 tou2, which comes on Feb. 2nd in Chinese lunar
calendar, soon after Chinese Spring Festival and Lantern Festival. In
Chinese astrology, people use 28 constellations to represent the position of
the moon, sun and stars. On February 2nd, the constellation looks
like the body of the dragon. That’s how the name comes for this festival.
Long Tai Tou
As you can tell
from the name, the Longtaitou Festival is related to dragon. In the tradition
of Chinese culture, the dragon is believed to be a very auspicious animal. It
is also believed to be in charge of bringing rains, and both of these are
important factors in ancient agricultural society. Today, however, it's lesser
related to agriculture as China steps into
a more industrial country.
However, the ways
to celebrate Dragon-Head-Raising Festival remains the unchanged. Today, Longtaitou
Festival is celebrated in various ways. For those who are learning Chinese,
one of the most weird customs is to get a new haircut or an entirely new
hairstyle. But it is quite popular and common a custom to have a new haircut on
this day. It is said to bring luck to the coming New Year and it’s a symbol of
a brand new year. On this day, there are many other traditional customs, like eating
pancakes, noodles, fried peas and steam buns. The eating of the pea, noodles
and dumplings signified eating the eye, beard and ear of the lazy dragon. It
was believed that these practices would stimulate the lazy dragon to finish his
work.
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