元宵节

Exploring Chinese culture
The Lantern Festival
The Lantern Festival is celebrated everywhere on January 15th of the lunar
calendar, right after the Spring Festival. Traditionally, the Lantern Festival is a part of
the Spring Festival. This day is always the first full moon in the lunar New Year.
Across China, people celebrate by hanging up lanterns and festoons, attending
dancing and singing performances, making “Yuan Xiao” or sweet rice dumplings and
lighting fireworks. This is also a continuation of the Spring Festival celebration. On
the Lantern Festival night, the moon illuminates the dark sky while many lanterns
shrine bright colors on the earth. The traditions of viewing decorative lanterns on this
night began more than two thousand years ago in the Western Han Dynasty. In the
earlier times, those beautiful lanterns were only seen in the imperial palaces.
Slowly it evolved into a celebration on the grand scale for the ordinary folks
everywhere. A few days before the Lantern Festival, people begin gathering oiled
paper, silk cloths, bamboo sticks and flower to make all types of lanterns. Some
people go to the lively streets to pick a personal favorite. The lanterns sometimes
come in a series about certain folklore (民间传说) , holiday customs, or lucky mascots.
The Lantern Festival is also a romantic holiday. In the feudal society, young girls
were not allowed to go out freely. But on the night of the Lantern Festival, they were
allowed to view the lantern lights in groups. Sometimes couples would go on dates
strolling down the streets lit with lantern lights. Today people still invite others to
view lanterns together.
Across China, the Lantern Festival is celebrated in many different styles. In
places near water, people put lotus lanterns in the river to let them flow down stream,
carrying the loss they feel for the relatives that have passed away. In the north, as
traditional customs combined with modern science and technology, there evolved the
Ice Lantern Festival. The combination of the ice and snow with colored lights,
carvings, designs, and special scenery yield a spectacular winter paradise.
The Lantern Riddle is a special word-game played by the Chinese people who
not only craft many types of beautiful lanterns for the others to appreciate, but also
create many interesting riddles. The traditional riddles are written on the lanterns.
Today, many people glue a slip of paper with the riddle at the bottom of the lanterns
for the viewers to solve. Those who solve the riddles correctly will receive a prize
from the riddle’s creator.
Just like China’s other traditional holidays, the Lantern Festival also has its own
special dish—“Yuan Xiao”, or sweet dumpling soup. Although the sweet dumplings
differ in name and recipe from the North and South, they are always made with
glutinous rice flour as the outside. The filling is usually composed of different kinds
of fruit kernels (仁，核)and sugar. The sweet dumplings are always round and white, as
it represents the moon on the night of the Lantern Festival.