In Guangdong, children use wormwood wheat medicine or wormwood, cattail, impatiens, magnolia and other flowers to boil and wash, while teenagers and adult men take a bath on the river and beach, which is called dragon boat washing water to wash away bad luck and bring good luck. In Hunan, Guangxi and other places, cypress leaves, anemone roots, wormwood, calamus, peach leaves, etc. are boiled into liquid medicine for bathing, regardless of gender, age and family.
Extended data:
1. Washing herbal water is one of the customs of Dragon Boat Festival. Dragon Boat Festival is the most concentrated day of plant Chinese medicine in a year, and medicines are everywhere at noon.
2. The existing written records about the custom of washing herbal water were first found in the book Dai Dai Li Jixia Zheng Xiao at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, but the orchids mentioned in this paper are not orchids, but flying grasses or compositae herbs, which are fragrant and can be cooked and bathed.
3. Volume 22 of Miscellaneous Medicine Collection quotes the lost article of Miscellaneous Medicine Collection of Jingchu Age: "On May 5, competing for miscellaneous medicines can cure all diseases." This custom still exists today and is widely popular.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia-Dragon Boat Festival Customs
References:
China Net-Hygienic Customs of Taking Medicine, Washing Blue and Detoxifying Poison in Dragon Boat Festival