Shi Bing Tong is a traditional food eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival in Taizhou [Photo/Taizhou.com.cn]

The Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional Chinese festival that falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. It is a tradition to eat rice dumplings, or zongzi, on that day, and Taizhou residents will often offer them as gifts to relatives and friends.

On the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, Taizhou residents often decorate their doors by hanging images of ghost hunter Zhong Kui along with artemisia and calamus leaves to drive out evil spirits and pray for safety.

Taizhou residents will often drink calamus wine, spread realgar wine around the house and hang scented multicolor sachets to ward off wickedness and disease. They also eat salted duck eggs to prevent illness and ward off summer heat and seasonal dampness.

Children usually wear a five-colored thread on their feet and neck in order to avoid illness and stay healthy. They also often bathe in water boiled with houttuynia, thistle, verbena, artemisia, and cyperus rotundus at lunchtime.

Curiously, dragon boat races are not held in Taizhou to celebrate the festival, which is the custom in most Chinese cities.

The Chinese character Wang is written on the forehead of a child during the Dragon Boat Festival in Taizhou. [Photo/Taizhou.19lou.com]

Taizhou residents often drink calamus wine, spread realgar wine around the house and hang a multicolored scented sachet in front of their homes during the Dragon Boat Festival in Taizhou to ward off wickedness and disease. [Photo/Official WeChat Account: meilitaizhou_]