专题 08 中国文化读写专项：重阳节+腊八节- 2024年高考英语常考中国文化读写专练+素材积累

Lesson 11 Double Ninth Festival 重阳节 The Double Ninth Festival, also named Chong Yang Festival, falls on the ninth day of the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, hence it gets name of Double Ninth Festival. On this day, people would like to drink chrysanthemum wine and have chrysanthemum cakes. The chrysanthemum is a plant often used as a Chinese herbal medicine. People in ancient times believed that, in addition to detoxification, chrysanthemum could drive away evil spirits and prevent one from getting a cold in late autumn. So, making and drinking chrysanthemum could date back to many centuries, and it became the traditional food on the Double Ninth Festival, to avoid evil spirits and misfortunes. Besides, the Chinese word for wine is Jiu, a homonym of the Chinese word for long, symbolizing longevity. Another special food for this festival is chrysanthemum cakes. The Chinese word for cake is Gao, a homonym of the Chinese word for high, symbolizing progress and promotion at work and in daily life and improvement in life year by year. In addition, mountains are high, so eating cakes can take the place of going for a climb -- by a stretch of the imagination. Since nine is the highest odd digit, people take two of them together to signify longevity. Therefore, the ninth day of the ninth month has become a special day for people to pay their respects to the elderly and a day for the elderly to enjoy themselves. It has also been declared China's Day for the Elderly.  Origin The festival is based on the theory of Yin and Yang, the two opposing principles in nature. Yin is feminine, negative principle, while Yang is masculine and positive. In ancient times people believed that all natural phenomena could be explained by this theory. Numbers were also related to this theory. Even numbers belonged to Yin and odd numbers to Yang. The ninth day of the ninth lunar month is a day when the two Yang numbers meet. So it is called Chong Yang. Chong means double in Ch