Lantern Festival--Time for Fun
By admin on 2015-01-12

Lantern Festival, annually celebrated on the 15th of the first lunar month, falls on February 9 this year. It’ll be a time for outdoor carnival across the country and mark the official end of the 2009 Spring Festival.

Eating yuanxiao (sweet dumplings made with glutinous rice flour) and tangyuan (dumplings literally meaning “boiled spheres”) and watching lantern displays are the things to do on this day.

Before the holiday, people are busy preparing for the festive must-haves. Prominent display shelves at supermarkets and specialty food stores across China are packed with yuanxiao or tangyuan. For instance, Jinfang Snack Bar, a well-known specialty store located in southern Beijing, spares all of its accommodating space to make and sell yuanxiao during the festive season. It’s said profits from yuanxiao accounts for half of the store’s yearly income.

Lanterns,self-made or bought, are hung up to illuminate the festive night. In urban areas, decorative lanterns are hung across major streets, making the night a sea of flaring lantern and twinkling night. Nanjing, capital of East China’s Jiangsu Province has one of China’s most lavish and popular lantern displays around the Confucius Temple by the Qinhuai River. At the lantern fairs, people try to solve puzzles written on the lanterns and enjoy the festive atmosphere with families and friends. This year, parks in Beijing such as Beijing Sculpture Park, Yanshan Park and Beijing Garden of World’s Flowers hold lantern displays on the festive occasion, which attract plentiful audiences.

On the night, magnificent lanterns and fireworks create a beautiful scene. Most families spare some fireworks from the New Year’s Eve and let them off in the Lantern Festival. Some local governments will even organize a fireworks party.

In the daytime of the Festival, performances, such as a dragon dance, lion dance, yangge dance, stilt-walking and shehuo show, will be also staged.

Dragon dance was originally a dance to please the dragon, and pray for rain during heavy droughts. Gradually it became an entertainment for festive occasions, most popular on the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival days, believed to bring bumper harvests, good luck and prosperity. Dragons, ranging from several meters to more than 100 meters in length, are made from light materials such as bamboo, wood, rattan, cloth and paper. The longer a dragon is, the more performers there are. With poles attached to the belly of the dragon, performers hold the poles and raise the dragon, dancing to the beats of roaring drums. There’s always a man raising a ball at the front to entice the dragon to the rhythm.

In South China’s Guangzhou City, the Lantern Festival is marked with series of jolly activities, in which the lion dance always attracts the biggest audience. The dance is believed to bring luck and ward off evil spirits. The “lion” makes dramatic movements to the rhythm of drums and gongs, imitating the habit of lions, such as licking hair, shaking hair, kicking the feet and wallowing.

On the festival, Shehuo show is popular in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province and North China’s Shanxi Province. Shehuo is a mass entertainment that involves a great deal of performers, virtually enabling almost all the men in a village to participate either in the performance or the preparation work. It’s rooted in the primitive sacrificial activities in which ancient people prayed for harvest and affluence from “She”, originally meaning the God of Earth, and “Huo”, literally meaning fire which ancient people believed to have the magic power to drive away evil spirits. Shehuo in many villages is more like acrobatics or martial arts performances.

An age-old festival

The carnival-like Lantern Festival, with a history of more than 2,000 years, is a rare escape from busy work in modern times,It’s believed that the festival originated in the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-24AD) and flourished into a pure festive carnival in the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties.

There are many different beliefs about the origin of the Lantern Festival. But one thing for sure is that it had something to do with religious worship. According to one legend, the festival was a time to worship Taiyi, the God of Heaven in ancient times who was believed to control the destiny of the human world. Beginning with Qinshihuang, the first emperor to unite the country, all emperors of subsequent dynasties ordered splendid ceremonies each year. The emperor would ask Taiyi to bring favorable weather and good health to him and his people. Emperor Wudi of the Western Han Dynasty directed special attention to this event. In 104 BC, he proclaimed it one of the most important celebrations and the ceremony would last throughout the night.

Throughout the Han Dynasty, Buddhism flourished in China. One emperor heard that Buddhist monks would watch sarira, or remain 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.

Until the Sui Dynasty in the sixth century, Emperor Yangdi invited envoys from other countries to China to see colorful lighted lanterns and enjoy gala performances. By the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in the seventh century, lantern displays would last three days. The emperor also lifted the curfew, allowing people to enjoy festive lanterns day and night. It is not difficult to find Chinese poems which describe this happy scene. In the Song Dynasty, the festival was celebrated for five days in a row and the activities began to spread to many big cities in China. Colorful glass and even jade were used to make lanterns, with figures from folk tales painted on the lanterns.