Chaoshan Lantern Festival Customs

Customs of Chaoshan Lantern Festival include Lantern Tour, Hanging Lantern, Ting Table, Sugar Lion and Lantern Riddle.

1. Lantern Tour

The lanterns of Chaoshan have various forms and unique styles, such as gauze lanterns and living scenery. The themes of the lanterns include flowers and fruits, insects and fishes, birds and animals, as well as characters of dramas and folk tales. In addition to swimming lanterns, the streets, alleys, rows of stores, courtyards, ancestral halls, etc. are all decorated with various kinds of lotus lanterns, plum blossom lanterns, carp lanterns, horse lanterns and so on.

2, hanging lights

In addition to the large-scale tour lantern event, families have the custom of hanging lights. Because the Chiu Chow language "light" and "Ding" homophonic, light and add Ding is close to the sound, so the Chiu Chow people think that light is a good omen for adding Ding, is "prosperous" performance.

3, do Ding table

Old times, the Chaoshan countryside, where the previous year gave birth to a boy's family, the night of the Lantern Festival, but also in the ancestral shrine to set up a feast to celebrate the "out of the Ding", commonly known as the "do Ding table". With the progress of society and people's mindset change, although the Chao people still have the custom of the Lantern Festival to do Ding table, but more changed in the home, and is limited to invite friends and relatives.

4, to the sugar lion

In some places, the Chaoshan Lantern Festival in front of the God to the sugar lion (sugar as raw material, made of lion-shaped sugar cubes), praying for a prosperous new year, good luck and great fortune.

5, guessing riddles

Lantern riddles on the table full of colorful riddles, surrounded by lights. Guess the riddle, in the master of a "dong dong dong" drum after, you can start guessing. Guessing riddles have pen guessing and oral report guessing points. Lantern riddle guessing is a popular folklore activity in Shantou City.