Buddha Bathing Festival

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Buddha Bathing Festival

发布时间：2020-08-08

The festival falls on April 8 of the lunar calendar. It is said that a plague spread all over Zhongshan in the summer of a year. People turned to many doctors for medical treatment, which proved futile. A poor farmer could not afford neither a doctor's visit nor the drugs. But, he smelt the flurries of strange fragrance from the Pluchea Indica tree beside his house and plucked a handful of leaves, which he mashed up and mixed into sweet water. Then, he drank the water, which unexpectedly cured his disease and refreshed his spirit. After that, he would drink a bowl of sweet water containing Pluchea Indica whenever he had a headache or fever. As the practice evolved until today, the villagers will pluck the leaves of Pluchea Indica trees on the 8th of every April to squeeze juice, mix it with flour and sugar and then steam the mixture into Pluchea Indica cakes for the festival. "四月烟樨满路边, 拈来制病味香甜. 醉看儿辈争番啖,浴佛人传倍闹喧." (Whentheroadside isfull of Pluchea Indica in April, pick the fragrant leaves to treat disease; watch the children vying to drink it, Buddha-bathing people make such a clamour.) The poem describes the scenes of bathing Buddha and eating Pluchea Indica cakes on April 8. In some places of Zhongshan, the villagers will line up for a wooden dragon dance to pray for good weather and a bumper harvest.