On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, dragon boats race across the water, and the aroma of zongzi fills the air. As one of China's four major traditional festivals, the Dragon Boat Festival has long been woven into the cultural fabric of the Chinese nation. Amid the lively atmosphere of eating zongzi and watching dragon boat races, have we ever pondered the deeper cultural codes behind this festival? The Dragon Boat Festival is far more than a simple "Poet's Day" or "Zongzi Day"—it is a composite festival carrying multiple layers of cultural memory, its origins revealing a fascinating diversity. From ancient dragon totem worship to commemorating the great poet Qu Yuan, from seasonal customs for warding off epidemics in summer to celebrating loyalty and righteousness, the Dragon Boat Festival is like a prism, refracting the vibrant spectrum of Chinese civilization. The earliest origins of the Dragon Boat Festival can be traced back to summer solstice rituals during the pre-Qin period. Ancient Chinese observed celestial phenomena and noticed that in mid-summer during the fifth lunar month, the Azure Dragon constellation (Canglong Qixiu) ascended to the zenith of the southern sky, as described in the fifth line of the Qian hexagram in the *Book of Changes*: "The flying dragon is in the heavens." This period marked the peak of yang energy, while poisonous insects and diseases began to thrive. The people of the pre-Qin era regarded this day as the "evil month and evil day," forming customs such as bathing in orchid-infused water, hanging mugwort, and wearing fragrant sachets to ward off evil spirits. The *Xia Xiaozheng* records: "On this day, medicine is stored to eliminate toxic vapors," while the *Da Dai Liji* mentions "collecting orchids for bathing." These customs reflect the ancient people's observations of natural cycles and their wisdom in responding to them, forming the earliest cultural layers of the Dragon Boat Festival. As history progressed, the festival became closely intertwined with dragon totem worship. Scholar Wen Yiduo, in his work *Research on the Dragon Boat Festival*, proposed that the festival originated as a dragon totem sacrificial ceremony among the ancient Wu and Yue peoples of the middle and lower Yangtze River regions. With their water-rich environment, these communities revered the dragon as a totem, offering sacrifices through dragon boat racing and throwing zongzi into the water to pray for favorable weather and abundant harvests. Dragon boat races mimicked the form and movements of dragons, while zongzi may have been offerings to water deities. These primitive religious rituals gradually evolved into recreational activities, but their core—reverence for nature and prayers for life—has endured. In regions like the Miluo River in Hunan and Suzhou in Jiangsu, ancient rituals worshiping dragon gods are still preserved today, serving as vivid evidence of this origin theory. During the Warring States period, the cultural...

  Every year on May 1st, bright red flags flutter, and joyful songs fill the air as people enjoy their hard-earned holiday. Known as "Labor Day," this occasion is framed in official narratives as a celebration of the glory of labor and the spirit of dedication. Yet, when we peel back the layers of history, we discover that the true origins of International Workers' Day stand in stark contrast to today’s warm and fuzzy festivities—it was born from the bloody struggles of the working class, etched into the darkest chapters of capitalist development. The essence of this holiday is not an affirmation of the existing order but a call to remember the obscured history of class struggle.   On May 1, 1886, Chicago witnessed an unprecedented wave of worker strikes. More than 350,000 workers took to the streets with a simple and direct demand: an eight-hour workday. "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will"—a slogan that seems normal today, but back then, it was a right workers had to fight for with their lives. In late 19th-century America, laborers typically worked 14 to 16 hours a day, sometimes even longer, for meager wages that barely sustained survival, all while toiling in perilous conditions. Capital, like a ravenous beast, devoured the sweat and blood of the working class.     What began as a peaceful protest soon turned into a bloodbath. On May 3, clashes broke out between striking workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and strike-breakers, prompting police to open fire, killing and injuring several. The next day, workers gathered at Haymarket Square to protest. As police moved in to disperse the crowd, a bomb was thrown, killing seven officers and at least four workers—an event later dubbed the "Haymarket Affair" or "Haymarket Massacre." Authorities responded with brutal repression: eight labor leaders were arrested, sentenced to death, and four were ultimately hanged. These activists were branded as "anarchists," their real crime being nothing more than daring to fight for the basic rights of the working class.   This history has been quietly erased from today’s official Labor Day narratives. In the U.S., mainstream society deliberately set Labor Day on the first Monday of September, distancing it from the radical origins of May 1. In socialist countries, while International Workers' Day was retained, its original meaning—as a rebellion against capitalist oppression—was hollowed out into the vapid slogan of "glorifying labor." The class-struggle essence of the holiday was diluted, repurposed as a harmless endorsement of the existing economic order. This politics of memory amounts to a systemic erasure of labor movement history.   To grasp the true significance of International Workers' Day, we must revisit the living conditions of the 19th-century working class. Workers then endured not only grueling hours but also deadly environments. A survey from 1...