About The Lantern Festival
yuán xiāo jié
元 宵 节 --- The lantern festiva
The lantern festival falls on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, usually in february or march in the gregorian calendar. As early as the western han dynasty (206 bc-ad 25), it had become a festival with great significance. This day's important activity is watching lanterns. Throughout the han dynasty (206 bc-ad 220), buddhism flourished in china. One emperor heard that buddhist monks would watch sarira, or remains from the cremation of buddha's body, and light lanterns to worship buddha on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, so he ordered to light lanterns in the imperial palace and temples to show respect to buddha on this day. Later, the buddhist rite developed into a grand festival among common people and its influence expanded from the central plains to the whole of china.
cāi dēnɡ mí
猜 灯 谜 --- Guessing lantern riddles
Till today, the lantern festival is still held each year around the country. Lanterns of various shapes and sizes are hung in the streets, attracting countless visitors. Children will hold self-made or bought lanterns to stroll with on the streets, extremely excited. "Guessing lantern riddles"is an essential part of the festival. Lantern owners write riddles on a piece of paper and post them on the lanterns. If visitors have solutions to the riddles, they can pull the paper out and go to the lantern owners to check their answer. If they are right, they will get a little gift. The activity emerged during people's enjoyment of lanterns in the song dynasty (960-1279). As riddle guessing is interesting and full of wisdom, it has become popular among all social strata.
yuán xiāo hé tānɡ yuán
元 宵 和 汤 圆 ---- Yuanxiao and tangyuan
People in northern China will eat yuanxiao on this day, while southerners will eat tangyuan. So this is called 元宵节(yuanxiao festival) in Chinese. Yuanxiao is small dumpling balls made of glutinous rice flour with
sesame, bean paste, jujube paste, walnut meat, dried fruit, sugar and edible oil as filling. Yuanxiao can be boiled, fried or steamed. it tastes sweet and delicious. What’s more, tangyuan in chinese has a similar pronunciation with "tuanyuan”, meaning reunion. So people eat them to denote union, harmony and happiness for the family.
yuán xiāo huó dònɡ
元 宵 活 动 --- Lantern Festival activities
In the daytime of the festival, performances such as a dragon lantern dance, a lion dance, a land boat dance, a yangge dance, walking on stilts and beating drums while dancing will be staged. On the night, except for magnificent lanterns, fireworks form a beautiful scene. Most families spare some fireworks from the spring festival and let them off in the lantern festival. Some local governments will even organize a fireworks party.
7. März 2018
