Medicine Fragrance Festival

In Manchu farmhouses, many people refer to the fifth day of the fifth lunar month as the "Herb Fragrance Festival". When women chat about daily life, they all say that the medicinal herbs picked before dawn on this "Fifth Month Festival" are extremely effective. Others claim that the dew on this day is like a magic panacea; if you wash your eyes with the morning dew of this day, it will ensure your eyes stay bright for a whole year, truly like holy water. The mugwort picked on the Fifth Month Festival, when dried in the shade, is used for "moxibustion" (in acupuncture and moxibustion therapy). It can even dissolve food stagnation in the stomach. For cold-damp leg problems, moxibustion with mugwort in autumn can almost cure them in seven days. Others say that the "eight-strand ox" (officially known as dictamnus dasycarpus in pharmacology) dug on this day has a stronger medicinal effect and better therapeutic results. On the Fifth Month Festival, people all get up early to wash their eyes and faces in the river. Manchu farm women get up the earliest; they first go to the small river to wash their faces and comb their hair, and also bring back water in copper basins to wash the faces of their parents-in-law.

Children often sing a song on the Fifth Month Festival: "Zongzi fragrance fills the kitchen, mugwort fragrance fills the hall, peach branches are inserted on the gate, warding off diseases and evil, bringing happiness and health." From these lyrics, people will surely associate that mugwort is more effective than other medicinal herbs. The lyric "mugwort fragrance fills the hall" is because in the 1930s, there were many thatched houses in the rural areas of Xinbin Mountain City, with very few brick houses. Large clusters of mugwort were inserted under the eaves. When the wind blew, the faint fragrance wafted into the house through the open windows, truly making the mugwort fragrance fill the hall.

Peach branches are inserted on the gate, or small flower baskets carved from peach pits are hung on the door, or on children's wrists and necks. People believe that this can ward off evil spirits.