What are the customs of Lantern Festival?

Lantern Festival:

Also known as Shangyuan Festival, Xiaozhengmu, Yuanxi or Lantern Festival, it is one of the traditional festivals in China and also in the area of the Chinese character cultural circle and overseas Chinese. Traditional customs go out to enjoy the moon, lighting lanterns and fireworks, happy to guess riddles, eating lanterns, pulling rabbit lamps and so on. In addition, in many places, the Lantern Festival has added traditional folk performances such as dragon lanterns, lions, stilt walkers, dry boats, rice-planting songs and drums.

Eating Lantern Festival:

Eating Lantern Festival has a long history in China. Song Dynasty, the folk that is popular a Lantern Festival to eat? The novelty of food. This food, the earliest called "? Floating Yuanzi" later called "Lantern"? The businessman also beautifully called "Yuanbao". Lantern that is "dumplings" to sugar, rose, sesame, bean paste, yellow cinnamon, walnuts, nuts, jujube paste, etc. for the filling, wrapped in glutinous rice flour into a round shape, can be meat or vegetarian, with a variety of flavors. It can be boiled in soup, deep-fried or steamed, and has the meaning of reunion. Shaanxi's dumplings are not wrapped, but in the glutinous rice flour "rolled" into, or boiled Division or deep-fried, hot fire, a reunion.

Lantern Festival:

The 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar is the "Lantern Festival", this festival folk have hanging lamps, playing lamps, watching lamps and lanterns custom, so it is also known as the Festival of Lights.

The Lantern Festival is a traditional Lantern Festival customs, began in the Western Han Dynasty, flourished in the Sui and Tang dynasties. After the Sui and Tang dynasties, the wind of lights prevailed, and inherited in later generations. And the first month of the 15th, and is the annual lantern fireworks climax. So the Lantern Festival is also known as the "Festival of Lights" in Shanxi, the first level of the county city outline and even townships, townships, these residents are concentrated, busy and bustling area, before the arrival of the first month of the fifteenth, the streets are full of lanterns, flowers everywhere, the lights are swaying, to the night of the first month of the fifteenth night to reach a climax. The first five days of the first month of the "lanterns" has become the Shanxi folk Lantern Festival representative food spontaneous activities, in the night of the first month of the first five days, the streets and alleys, red lanterns hanging high, there are palace lanterns, animal head lanterns, horse lanterns, flower lamps, bird lamps and so on, attracting the masses of the lanterns. Taiyuan area, Taigu County lights are very famous. The lamps of Taigu are famous for their variety, exquisite production and attractive appearance.

Guessing lantern riddles:

Guessing lantern riddles, also known as lantern riddles playing lantern riddles, is China's unique rich national style of a traditional form of folkloric recreational activities, from ancient times has begun to circulate the Lantern Festival features activities. On the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the traditional folk to hang up colored lanterns, fireworks, and then there are good people to write riddles on paper, pasted on the colorful lanterns for people to guess. Because riddles can enlighten wisdom and cater to the festive atmosphere, so the response of many people, and then riddles gradually become an indispensable program of the Lantern Festival. Lantern riddles add to the festive atmosphere, showing the ingenuity of the ancient working people and the desire for a better life.

Juggling Dragon Lanterns:

Juggling Dragon Lanterns, also known as Dragon Dance or Dragon Dance. Its origin can be traced back to ancient times. Legend has it that as early as in the period of the Yellow Emperor, in a kind of large-scale song and dance of "Qingjiao", there appeared the image of a dragon head with a bird body played by a human being, and then choreographed a dance scene of six augur dragons interspersed with each other. See in the written records of the dragon dance, is the Han Dynasty Zhang Heng's "Xijing Fu", the author of the hundred plays in the narrative of the dragon dance made a vivid depiction. According to the "sui book - music" records, the emperor of sui yang similar to the hundred plays in the dragon dance performance of the "yellow dragon change" is also very wonderful, the dragon dance is popular in many parts of China. The Chinese people revere the dragon as a symbol of good luck.

Stilts:

Stilts, the traditional folk program - the lion dance is a popular folk performance of mass skills. Stilts are one of the hundred ancient Chinese plays, which appeared as early as the Spring and Autumn Period. The earliest introduction of stilts in China is in the article of "Lie Zi - Said Fu": "There was a Lanzi in Song, who used his skill to dry Song Yuan. Song Yuan summoned him to see his skill.

Lion Dance:

Lion Dance is an excellent folk art in China. Whenever there is a Lantern Festival or a gathering for a celebration, the folk will cheer up with lion dance. This custom originated in the Three Kingdoms period and became popular during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and has a history of more than a thousand years.

"Lion dance" began in the Wei and Jin dynasties, flourished in the Tang Dynasty, also known as the "Lion Dance", "Taiping music", generally completed by three people, two people dressed as a lion, a person acting as a lion's head, a person acting as a lion's body and back feet, the other when the lion guide, the dance method is divided into military and civilian dance to show that the lion's docility, there is a shaking of the hair, rolling, etc., the military lion lion lion lion performance, with the ferocious lion, there is a pengjiao, stomping, roll colorful ball and other actions.

Rowing the dry boat:

Rowing the dry boat, folklore has it that it is in honor of Dayu, who has been successful in curing the water. Rowing a dry boat, also known as running a dry boat, is to imitate the boat on land, most of the performance of running a dry boat is a girl. Dry boat is not a real boat, more than two thin boards, sawed into a boat shape, bamboo and wood tied into, and then masked with colorful cloth, set of ties in the girl's waist, as sitting in the boat, as in the hands of the same paddle, to do the rowing position, one side running, one side singing some local ditties, singing and dancing, which is the rowing of dry boat. Sometimes there is another man dressed up as a boat passenger, partnering performance, most of them dressed up as clowns, with a variety of comical actions to amuse the audience joy. Rowing the dry boat is popular in many parts of China.

Rat-by-rat:

Rat-by-rat is a traditional folk activity during the Lantern Festival, which began in the Wei and Jin dynasties. It was mainly said to people who raised silkworms. Because rats often eat the silkworms in the night, people say that on the 15th day of the first lunar month, they feed the rats with rice porridge, so that they can not eat the silkworms.

The Jing Chu chronicle says that on the fifteenth day of the first month, a fairy descended to the family of a man named Chen, and said to them: If you can worship me, let your silkworms have a good harvest. The custom was then formed.

Send children lamps:

The Lantern Festival referred to as "send lamps", also known as "send lanterns" and so on, that is, before the Lantern Festival, the mother's family to send lanterns to the new daughter's home, or general friends and relatives to the newly married family of the infertile, in order to increase the Ding auspicious omen, because the "lamps" and "Ding" resonance. This custom in many places, Xi'an, Shaanxi area is the first eight to fifteen during the first month to send lamps, the first year to send a pair of large lanterns, a pair of glass lamps with colorful paintings, hope that the daughter of the marriage of the lucky star, early birth of a child; such as the daughter of the pregnancy, in addition to the large lanterns, but also to send one or two pairs of small lanterns, wishing the daughter a safe pregnancy.

Welcome purple nuns:

Purple nuns, also known as chi nuns, the north more known as toilet nuns, pit three nuns. Ancient folk custom on the fifteenth day of the first month to welcome the toilet god Zigu and sacrifice, divination sericulture, and account for all things. Legend has it that the purple nun was originally a concubine, jealous of the older women, the first month of the fifteenth was killed in the toilet, the toilet god. Every day to welcome the purple nun this night, people with straw, cloth, etc. tied into a life-size portrait of the purple nun, and at night in the toilet between the pigsty to meet and worship. This custom is popular throughout the north and south, as early as the period of the North and South Dynasties are seen in the record.

Walking the hundred diseases:

"Walking the hundred diseases", also known as the tour of the hundred diseases, scattered hundred diseases, baked hundred diseases, walk the bridge, etc., is a kind of elimination pray for health activities. The night of the Lantern Festival, women meet to travel, traveling in pairs, see the bridge must be crossed, that can get rid of diseases and prolong life.

Walking the hundred diseases is a custom in the north since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, some in the 15th, but more in the 16th. On this day, women dressed in festive costumes, groups of people out of the house, walking bridge across the danger, climbed the city, touching the nail for a child, until midnight, to return.