Spring Dragon Festival falls on the second day of the second lunar month. The folklore goes that every second day of the second lunar month is the time when the dragon in charge of the rain lifts its head. From that day on rainfall will increase gradually, so it is called the “Spring Dragon Festival” or “Dragon Head Festival.” There is a saying widely spread in the north of China that “the dragon lifts its head on the second day of the second lunar month and large barns will be full and small ones will overflow.”
On every occasion of the Spring Dragon Festival, families in most of the areas in northern China will go to wells or rivers to fetch water with their lanterns on in the morning. Then they will come back home and turn on the light, burn joss sticks and ofer up sacrifices. This ceremony was called “attracting the dragon in the field” in the old times. On this festival, every family should eat noodles, which means “lifting the dragon’s head”; fry cakes, which means “eating the dragon’s gallbladder”; and pop corn so that “golden beans can blossom; dragon god can return to heaven and distribute the rain to the earth and crops can grow well.”
