The Dragon Boat Festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, exactly at noon on that day. This day coincides with the annual flood season and midsummer, when pests and bacteria multiply rapidly and people are easily infected with diseases. In previous times, sanitary conditions were poor, technology was backward, and people could not understand the source of disease. In the fifth month of the lunar calendar, the weather was bad, but it was an important season for the growth of grains. Therefore, people believed that May was an ominous month. People believed that these natural phenomena were disturbing signs, and the ancestors would offer sacrifices to the sky. They believed that high mountains and the banks of long rivers were good places for sacrifices. The northern tribes and ethnic groups in the mountainous areas of China prayed on the top of the mountain, and the southern people prayed by the river because they believed that they were descendants of the Chinese dragon (a legendary creature with a body like a snake, two claws, fish scales, a tail, and two deer antlers on its head).