For years, every Dragon Boat Festival has brought back the same childhood memory: the whole village full of kids climbing trees to snap off willow branches. I was tiny then, dragging home branches that were almost twice as long as I was, then helping stick them onto every door around the house, big and small.
Thinking about it now, the last time I picked willow branches myself was probably eleven years ago. Ever since I left home, I haven’t gone back for holidays anymore. The only regular trip home is during Lunar New Year.
This year I hadn’t planned on putting up willow branches at all. But when I went out in the morning, I noticed mugwort hanging by someone else’s door. That immediately made me think of home. I started wondering whether I should hang something too, except I wasn’t even sure what it should be.
In the south, the saying goes: willow branches for Qingming, mugwort for the Dragon Boat Festival.
Back home, though, willow branches are part of Dragon Boat Festival. That contrast between north and south is genuinely interesting. After looking into it a little, it seems this custom may survive only in certain parts of Gansu. I hadn’t expected that what I grew up with might actually count as a kind of local “minority” tradition.
From what I found, there are roughly two explanations for it.
One is that the willow-branch custom may be connected to the Cold Food Festival and the legend of Jie Zitui. Willow is traditionally associated with the Cold Food Festival, and because Gansu has long been a place where different ethnic groups and local cultures mixed together, customs from Cold Food Festival and Dragon Boat Festival may have blended over time.
The other explanation points to the Qing dynasty. When Zuo Zongtang was stationed in the northwest, he ordered large-scale willow planting there—the famous “Zuo Gong Willows”—to improve the local environment. Later generations may have come to see willow trees as a kind of protective tree, and that meaning may gradually have entered festival practice as well.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Today I might go back and see whether I can pick some mugwort. There are willow branches at school already. If that works out, then I can have both.