Why do South Korea have Xiangyang and Dongting Lake, but also celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival?

In South Korea, besides the Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival, which is quite similar to our Dragon Boat Festival, there are well-known place names such as Danyang, Xiangyang and Hanyang (now Seoul) Dongting Lake, which existed in China more than 2,000 years ago. Not only that, the distribution of these Korean place names above presents a distribution pattern along the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Han River, which is exactly the same as the development of Chu and the distribution pattern of cities in the Spring and Autumn Period. Obviously, this is not a coincidence.

The reason is that Korea is actually deeply influenced by Chu culture.

There were three tribes in the south of ancient Korean Peninsula, namely Mahan, Chen Han and Han Ge. In fact, the residents of Chu are descendants of Luo Shi and Lu Rong, who were originally Chu people and followed Fang to South Korea during the Qin Dynasty.

According to Zuo Zhuan, there are two small countries affiliated to Chu State, namely Luo State and Lu State, and their descendants take the country as their surname. According to Records of the Historian, Lu Sheng, Hou Sheng, Han Zhong and others of Chu took the opportunity to find an elixir for Qin Shihuang and fled overseas. It was not until the Three Kingdoms period that South Korea sent envoys to the Central Plains that people knew that these Chu scholars had fled to today's South Korea. For example, "The History of the Three Kingdoms" records: "Chen Han, an ancient country ... Old man Chen Han said that Qin died without hard labor and adapted to South Korea."

Of course, our history books alone are not enough to prove it. Let's take a look at Korea's own record. According to South Korea's "Luozhou Roche Datong Biography", "The Zhou Dynasty became a king because of the meritorious service of Da Roche, which was a state of Chu, and was later destroyed by Chu Qu's family because of Zhang Yu Roche." "Jincheng Roche Datong Spectrum" also records: "Roche was originally a descendant of Zhu Rong, Yun, and was sealed in the twelfth year of Spring and Autumn." Lu's genealogy has a similar record.

In addition, Chiyou is worshipped all over Korea, and Chiyou is also the third seedling of Chu. In Korean mythology, the tribe where Xiong Huan and Xiong Nv lived, like the ancestors of Chu, took bears as totems.

Obviously, this matter is ultimately related to Qin Shihuang. After all, the Chu culture in South Korea was brought by Chu local scholars, and the alchemist's escape could not be separated from Qin Shihuang's appeal for fairy medicine.

So what about gangneung danoje festival?

Jiangling Dragon Boat Festival is deeply influenced by Chu culture, so it has something to do with our Dragon Boat Festival, but it is also very different. After all, the two developed independently after the branch in the late Qin Dynasty.

South Korea's Dragon Boat Festival inherited more elements of Chu witchcraft, which lasted for three months. Unlike we eat zongzi to pay homage to Qu Yuan, the Dragon Boat Festival is to pay homage to mountain gods, where men wrestle and women wash their hair.

South Korea's application for the Dragon Boat Festival, which was later hotly debated, actually applied for a festival held during the Dragon Boat Festival, not the Dragon Boat Festival itself. There is still a big difference between the two. But this incident also shows the powerful influence of China's traditional culture on East Asian countries since ancient times.