The Dragon Head Festival
(Lóngtóu Jié 龙头节

Dramatis Personae

QIÁNG Wá 强娃 = a vigorous young man

LÓNG Huā 龙花 = his equally vigorous young wife

A talking dove (who is also an old man and a puff of smoke)

Long, long ago, there was a drought along the Yellow River. All the smaller rivers dried up, and people were left with no water.

Along the river, at the foot of Dragon Ax Mountain (Lóngfǔ Shān 龙斧山), there lived young newlyweds: QIÁNG Wá 强娃 and his wife LÓNG Huā 龙花. Concerned about the great drought, they consulted an old man, who told them that the secret to bringing water to the region lay at the bottom of the Pond of the Gold Dragon (Jīnlóng Tán 金龙潭).

So they traveled until they found the Pond of the Golden Dragon, and struggled until they reached the bottom of the pond, and then they began to dig. They dug and dug for forty-nine days, when they found a round, white stone, which turned into a dove, which flew up and landed on the side of the hole, where it promptly turned into an old man with a long, white beard.

You can’t cut through the mountain with your bare hands, said the dove man. You must first go to the top of Dragon Ax Mountain and get the mountain cutting ax (pǐshānfǔ 劈山斧). Having said this, the old man turned into a puff of white smoke and drifted away.

So Qiáng Wá and Lóng Huā struggled to the top of Dragon Ax Mountain, where they saw a tiny temple, in which they found the ax.

Taking the ax, they struck the mountain, and immediately a stream gushed forth, and a golden dragon flew out, and it began to rain.

And ever since that day, the second day of the second lunar month has been celebrated as the Dragon Head Festival.