What is the reason why the dragon raises its head on the second day of February? Why do people like to get haircuts on that day?

The origin of the dragon raising its head on February 2 According to folklore, on the second day of the second lunar month, it is the day when the Dragon King in charge of clouds and rain raises his head; from then on, the rain will gradually increase. Therefore, this day is called "Spring Dragon Festival". There is a folk proverb widely circulated in northern my country: "On February 2, the dragon raises its head; when the big warehouse is full, the small warehouse flows."

Whenever the Spring Dragon Festival comes, in most parts of northern my country, every household carries lanterns to the well or river to fetch water on this morning. When they return home, they light lamps, burn incense and offer offerings. In the old days, people called this ceremony "Yintianlong". On this day, every household also eats noodles, fried cakes, and popcorn, which are compared to "carrying dragon heads", "eating gentian", "golden beans bloom, the Dragon King ascends to the sky, clouds spread rain, and the grain is abundant" to show auspiciousness. .

This custom has been seen in the Ming Dynasty. Shen Bang's "Miscellaneous Notes of Wanshu" records: "The people of Wan call the second day of February to mean that the dragon raises its head. The villagers use ashes from outside the door to euphemistically spread them into the kitchen of the house, swirl them around the water tank, and call them to lead the dragon back." Yu Yizheng and Liu of the Ming Dynasty Dong's "A Brief Introduction to the Scenery of the Imperial Capital", Volume 2, records in the Spring Field: "On February 2nd, the dragon raises its head, fry the remaining cakes for New Year's Day sacrifices, smoke the bed and smoke insects, which is said to attract the dragon and the insects will not come out." The dragon is in the Chinese people. It has an extremely lofty status in people's minds. In ancient times, the dragon was believed to be the symbol of the emperor, an auspicious thing, and the master of peace, weather, and rain. Therefore, the proverb "On February 2, the dragon raises its head" means that with the coming of spring, all things will revive. The Hidden Dragon begins to move, indicating that the year's agricultural activities are about to begin.

The legend of the dragon raising its head on the second day of February. The farmer's proverb "On the second day of the second month, the dragon raises its head." It is said that in ancient times, there was no rain in the Guanzhong area, and the Jade Emperor ordered the dragon from the East China Sea to sow rain. The little dragon was so playful that he dove into the river and never came out again. A young man went to the cliff to collect "dragon water" to muddy the river water. Xiaolong emerged from the river to compete with the young man. Xiaolong was defeated and had to make rain. In fact, the so-called "dragon raises its head" refers to the insects starting to wake up after hibernation. Therefore, as the saying goes, "On February 2, the dragon raises its head, and scorpions and centipedes show their heads."

There is another saying about "February 2" called the Spring Dragon Festival. Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" records: "Dragon is the longest among scales. It can be dark or bright, thin or huge, long or short. It ascends to the sky at the spring equinox and dives into the abyss at the autumnal equinox." This is probably the "Spring Dragon" The earliest record of the custom of "Festival".

According to legend, when Wu Zetian became emperor, the Jade Emperor ordered not to rain on earth for three years. But the Jade Dragon in charge of the Tianhe River could not bear the suffering and starvation of the people, so he secretly sent a heavy rain. When the Jade Emperor learned about it, he knocked the Jade Dragon in charge of the Tianhe River down from the Heavenly Palace and pressed it under a mountain. There is also a monument erected at the foot of the mountain, which reads: The Dragon King's rainfall violates the laws of heaven, and he shall be punished for the rest of his life. If you want to return to Lingxiao Pavilion, you will have to wait until the golden beans bloom.

In order to save the Dragon King, people looked for blooming golden beans everywhere. On the second day of February of the following year, people were drying golden corn seeds, and suddenly remembered that the corn was like golden beans. When they were fried and bloomed, weren't they just golden beans? So every household popped popcorn, set up a table in the courtyard to burn incense, and offered "flowering golden beans" for the Dragon King and the Jade Emperor to see. The Dragon King knew that the people were trying to save it, so he shouted to the Jade Emperor: "The golden beans are blooming, let me out!" When the Jade Emperor saw the golden beans blooming in the courtyards of every house in the world, he had no choice but to pass on an edict to the Dragon King to return to heaven. Continue to bring rain to the world.

Since then, people have formed a habit. Every February 2nd, people pop corns and some fry beans. Adults and children also chant: "On February 2, the dragon raises its head, the big warehouse is full, and the small warehouse is full." In some places, stove ashes are spread into large circles in the yard, and grains are placed in the middle, which is called "beating". "Hoard" or "fill in". Its meaning is to wish for a good harvest and a full warehouse. During festivals, it is common in various places to add the title "dragon" to the name of food. Eating dumplings is called "dragon ears"; eating spring cakes is called "dragon scales"; eating noodles is called eating "dragon whiskers"; eating rice is called eating "dragon seeds"; eating wontons is called eating "longyan".

There are many other customs on this day. Before getting up, you should recite "February 2, the dragon will raise its head. If the dragon does not raise its head, I will." After getting up, you should light a lantern to shine on the beams of the house and recite while doing so. : "When the beams of the house are shined on the second day of the second lunar month, scorpions and centipedes have nowhere to hide." In some places, women do not stop sewing for fear of hurting the dragon's eyes; in some places, they stop washing clothes for fear of hurting the dragon's skin, and so on.

From a scientific point of view, the second day of the second lunar month is around the time of "The Waking of Insects", when the earth begins to thaw, the weather gradually gets warmer, and farmers say goodbye to their slack farming and start working in the fields. Therefore, in ancient times, "February 2" was also called "Shang Er". Therefore, the Spring Dragon Festival, which is popular among Chinese people, was also called the "Spring Plowing Festival" in ancient times. It is said that if you haven't woken up on this day, the rumbling thunder will call you, "If you don't shave your head in the first month, your uncle will die if you shave your head in the first month." This folk song has been sung for more than 360 years. Time has long obscured the original meaning, giving the barbers on the land of Kyushu a one-month "annual vacation" every year. To this day, most people still adhere to the custom of not going to barbershops during the first month of the year. In fact, this folk song is not at all a prophecy that if people shave their heads in the first month, their uncle will definitely die. Instead, it uses the helplessness of "not shaving your head in the first month - nostalgia for the past" to curse the "" Order to shave your head.”

Long before the Manchus entered the customs, they used a large number of Han people.

Not to mention that the Han people who originally lived in Liaodong, such as Ning Wanwo, Fan Wencheng, and Bao Chengxian, were the founders of the basic national policies of the Qing Dynasty. They were Hong Chengchou, the Minister of War in the Ming Dynasty, a fierce border guard in the Ming Dynasty, and later a leader of the Qing Dynasty. Wu Sangui, Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming, Shang Kexi and others who split the dynasty and became kings were all the pioneers who helped the Manchus conquer cities and expand territories. Even the regent Dorgon, the father of Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty, claimed: "I Cao Zhi has been living in the wind and rain for decades. "We are blind to all the ways. How can I be happy if I still have a guide?" At this time, although the Qing Dynasty had ruled most of China, Li Zicheng in the northwest Zhang Xianzhong in the southwest, King Fu, King Lu, King Tang, and King Gui in the south of the Yangtze River, and Zheng Chenggong in Taiwan were all proclaiming themselves kings and emperors, aiming to become kings. The Qing Dynasty still had to rely on these surrendered Han people to compete for the world. Therefore, in the first year of Shunzhi, when the young emperor was sitting in the Forbidden City and saying that he was a loner and a widower, he issued a series of edicts that clearly declared that "the clothes and hats of civil servants will temporarily follow the Ming system."

But only a year later, After the Qing army defeated Li Zicheng like a broken bamboo and swept across the south of the Yangtze River to eliminate the main resistance force of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor's father and regent Dorgon issued the "Edict to Shave the Hair" on behalf of the seven-year-old emperor Shunzhi. The imperial edict said: The system of shaving hair has always been implemented without uniformity and for those who do what they want. I want to wait until the world is settled before implementing this system. In today's domestic and foreign families, the king is like a father, and the people are like sons. How can it be contrary to the fact that father and son are one? If they are not unified, they will end up with two minds. Since the announcement, the limit of ten days inside and outside the capital has been directly controlled by the provinces and localities. Since the Ministry of Finance has issued the document, it has also been limited to ten days. In order to save money and save money, we will never lend lightly.

This is an imperial edict compiled by the literati of the imperial court. The actual "hair-shaving order" is much more bloody. , such aphorisms are hung on shavers across the country. Even until the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, barbers would have a wooden stick sticking up high on one end of their hair-shaving picks in the streets. Everyone knew that this was a household item passed down from their elders, and they would hang a mirror on it for customers to use when they were having their heads shaved. When I left, there was a flagpole hanging with the Manchurian "Edict on Head-Shaving". Therefore, among the wandering craftsmen in the old society, barbers were often called Daizhao, and they really once "shaved their heads according to orders."

The "Hair-Shaving Order" was issued in June of the second year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty. If before June of this year, most of the resistance against the Qing army in various places in Jiangnan were regular troops of the Zhu Ming Dynasty, then since June of this year, the spark-like militia uprisings in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were almost all made by the people. The masses fought desperately against having their heads shaved and braided.

Jiading, now part of Shanghai, was an important town in the south of the Yangtze River during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. After the "hair-shaving order" was issued, Hou Tongzeng, the Zuotong political envoy of the Ming Dynasty, and Huang Chunyao, a Jinshi, gathered tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians and vowed to keep their hair to survive with the city. The hereditary prince of the Qing Dynasty, Luck Dehun, personally supervised the siege. The rebel army defended the isolated city for several days in the face of strong enemies. Unexpectedly, it rained heavily. It happened that Li Chengdong, the general of the Ming Dynasty and the general of Wusong, brought artillery to assist. After the rain, the cannons rang out, and the city walls were heavily damaged. Everything collapsed, and the Qing army flooded into the city and started street battles with the helpless rebels, killing them from morning to night. Hou Tong once drowned himself with his two sons, Huang Chunyao hanged himself, and Li Chengdong, who was the accomplice of the tiger, actually ordered the massacre of the city, and more than 20,000 soldiers and civilians died immediately under the steel knife. This day is the fourth day of the seventh lunar month. On the following July 26th and August 16th, two more groups of volunteers formed on the outskirts of Jiading City and vowed not to shave their heads. Li Chengdong repeatedly ordered the massacre of innocent people. There were about 200,000 people in the city. , almost slaughtered. This is the famous atrocity "Three Jiading Massacres" in the early Qing Dynasty. Because people often compare it with the "Ten Days in Yangzhou" in which Qing soldiers burned, killed and looted Yangzhou continuously in April of the second year of Shunzhi, many people, even the famous Chinese novelist Mr. Cai Dongfan, in his famous book "Popular Romance of Chinese Dynasties", referred to the Qing Dynasty as the "Yangzhou Ten Days". The three massacres carried out by soldiers in Jiading were misunderstood as three consecutive days of massacre. In fact, the three massacres of the entire city, each time about ten days apart, were more cruel and thorough than three days of consecutive killings.

Jiangyin, compared with Yangzhou and Jiading, other important towns in the south of the Yangtze River, is just a small fortress, with only more than 90,000 people in the city. The person who was elected as the commander-in-chief of the city defense by the people did not have the 100,000-strong army of Shi Kefa, the first-rank scholar of the current dynasty, nor did he have the prominent status of Hou Tongzeng, the third-rank general general. He was just Yan Yingyuan, a classic historian who had resigned. In the Ming Dynasty, the Dianshi was lower than the ninth rank, and was not in the first rank. Strictly speaking, it could not be regarded as an official, but just a official. But this Yan Dianshi actually responded to the great trust of the people in the city and sneaked back to Jiangyin from his refuge in Huashi Mountain a hundred miles away. Under the cannons and crossbows of 240,000 Qing soldiers, he took on the responsibility of 90,000 soldiers. Commander of the common people. In the next eighty-one days, Yan Yingyuan and the people in the city shared the same hatred of the enemy and killed more than 75,000 enemy troops, including three princes and eighteen generals. Yan Dianshi used almost all the tactics in the Thirty-Six Strategies, including false surrender, setting up ambushes, fire attacks, straw men borrowing arrows, pretending to be gods, attacking from the east and west, attacking enemy camps at night, besieging the city, and even used suicide bombs. Yan Yingyuan recruited voluntary old men to go out of the city and pretend to surrender, put explosives in the sandwich of wooden barrels containing silver coins, and lit the fuse when presenting the money. Several old men with white hair and beards were burned together with the Qing army's Prince 1, General 3 and three thousand soldiers. The Qing army had to pay tribute to the three armies. On the day the city was breached, Yan Yingyuan was hit by several arrows and threw himself into the water. The Qing soldiers pulled him out of the water and stabbed his tibia to make him kneel down. After he fell to the ground, his knees did not bend until he died. According to some statistics, in the small town of Jiangyin, more than 97,000 people were massacred in the city, and more than 75,000 were massacred outside the city. Only 53 Jiangyin survivors saved their lives by hiding on the temple tower.

The day before Yan Yingyuan's death, he left a dying couplet on the Jiangyin city tower, which was about his long-cherished wish to "keep his hair intact":

On the eightyth day, I will wear my hair and pledge my allegiance to Taizu's seventeenth dynasty. figure.

One hundred thousand people defended the city together, leaving three hundred miles of Ming Dynasty.

If a military general is facing an absolutely powerful opponent on the battlefield, he can still fight with swords. Killing one is enough, killing two is profitable, and the death is fierce, but once the civil servants If you are captured, you can only let the other party slaughter you, and that will be a tragic death. When the "hair-shaving order" was issued, Zuo Maodi, an envoy of the Southern Ming Dynasty and Zuo Shilang (deputy minister of the Ministry of War), was living in Beijing Taiyuan Hospital. The attendant Ai Xuanxuan was afraid of death, so he shaved off his hair and put on big braids. Zuo Maodi beat him to death with sticks. After the regent Dorgon heard about it, he sent Zuo Maotai, Zuo Maodi's younger brother who had been demoted to the Qing Dynasty, to question him. Zuo Maodi asked knowingly: "You are a demoted official from the Manchu Qing Dynasty, how dare you pretend to be from my Zuo family? "Then he was scolded out of the building. Dorgon was furious and brought him to trial in person. When asked: "Why don't you want to shave your head?" Zuo Maodi's answer was resounding: "The head can be cut off, but the hair cannot be cut off!" Dorgon actually killed Zuo Maodi in violation of the convention of not killing envoys during war between the two countries.

Qu Shichu, Lingui Bo, was captured together with Zhang Tongchang, the minister of the Ministry of War. The commander of the Qing army was Kong Youde, the surrendered general of the Ming Dynasty. Kong relied on himself as a descendant of Confucius to persuade him to surrender. Qu Shichu and Zhang Tongchang became famous. Angry: "You are a lackey of Mao Wenlong's family. You hand over books and pour chamber pots. How can you pretend to be a descendant of the ancestors?" Kong Youde was so ashamed that he imprisoned the two of them separately and privately allowed them to shave their hair and become a monk. The two of them didn't take it seriously. For more than forty days, they sang poems and cursed the Qing court every day. Until the day of execution, Qu Shichun still straightened his clothes and bowed to the south. After Zhang Tongchang was killed, he stood upright without falling, and jumped three times when his head fell to the ground. Qu and Zhang sang dozens of poems together, one of which sang:

Waiting calmly for death and the destruction of the city, loyal ministers throughout the ages have advocated for themselves.

Three hundred years of grace have been lost, but the hair is still fragrant.

In stark contrast, there are those high-ranking officials with generous salaries who were scolded as "traitors" by the Han people and "errant ministers" by the Manchu emperors. During the Qi Dynasty of Ming Dynasty, Sun Zhixian was a Jinshi and a student of Hanlin Academy. After surrendering to the Qing Dynasty, he was awarded the title of Minister of Rites. He was the first Han minister in the court to have his hair shaved, braided and well-dressed. At that time, the "hair-shaving order" had not yet been issued, and the Manchu and Han ministers in the previous court were standing separately in their respective attires. Sun Zhixian stood on the side of the Han minister after he went to court. The Han minister scolded him for wearing a monkey hat and not allowing him to enter the ranks; he stood next to On the side of Minister Man, Minister Man also laughed at him and kicked him out of the queue, which made him extremely embarrassed. Later, he was seized by the Qing government and returned to his hometown. In the fourth year of Shunzhi, the rebel army captured his hometown Zichuan City, cut off his braid, planted strands of black hair into his scalp and paraded him through the streets, humiliating him in every possible way and then executed him.

It can be said that until the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu and Han territories were never in peace. However, the Manchus were able to rule China with a population of more than 200,000 for more than 280 years. In many major policies, they were superior to From the Zhu Ming Dynasty. From the withdrawal of Liao's rates, training rates, and suppression of rates in the early Qing Dynasty to the "nurturing population and never adding taxes" in the heyday of Kangxi and Qianlong, from no longer repairing the Great Wall to the pacification of Junggar, the recovery of Taiwan, and the Sino-Russian Yabusa battle, the Manchus He served the king and the country from the perspective of Greater China, until he finally sacrificed his own language and characters and integrated into the Chinese family. But when it comes to haircuts and clothing, which are much less important than language and writing, the Manchus are so stubborn that they insist on sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

During the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty, Chen Mingxia was a Jinshi. After entering the Imperial Academy, he became an official in the Ming Dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty, both the household and military departments of the Ducha Yuan were in trouble. When King Li Chuang entered the capital, he surrendered to the peasant army. When the Qing soldiers entered the pass, he worshiped again. Under Prince Rui Dorgon's account, he was granted the title of Shangshu (minister) of the Ministry of Personnel of the Qing Dynasty, was granted the title of Bachelor of Hongwen Academy, and was promoted to Shaobao and Taibao of the Crown Prince. This erratic and rebellious minister of three dynasties was even more despicable than Sun Zhixian in terms of character, but he happened to see the terrible consequences of the Qing Dynasty's forced hair shaving and the introduction of Manchu clothing. In the eleventh year of Shunzhi, Chen Mingxia was impeached and executed. Several of his crimes were difficult to verify. There was only one he confessed: "If you keep your hair and clothes, the world will be at peace." Chen Mingxia was cunning all his life, but these words from his heart cost him his fortune and life.