What is the culture of lanterns?

Lantern is an ancient lamp. As early as the eighth century BC, in the Tang Dynasty, the reasons for using lanterns were recorded. Lantern Festival, with flashing lights, symbolizes that "colorful dragons are auspicious, the people are rich and the country is strong", and the custom of Lantern Festival is still widely circulated.

During the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty, in order to celebrate the country's prosperity and people's peace, people tied lanterns and used flashing lights to symbolize "lucky dragons, rich people and strong country". Since then, the custom of playing lanterns has been widely spread.

Paper-cut lantern

Paper-cutting is one of the most popular folk arts in China, especially in the northeast, where every household will stick paper-cutting during the Spring Festival. Nowadays, paper-cutting is more used for decoration, so Cantonese might as well borrow it. Paper-cutting can be used to decorate walls, doors and windows, house columns, mirrors and so on. , can also be used to decorate lanterns. There are generally two ways to cut paper for lanterns: scissors and knife scissors.

Scissors are scissors. After cutting, paste several paper-cuts (usually no more than 8) together, and finally process the pattern with sharp scissors. Knife scissors first fold the paper into several folds, put it on the soft mixture of ashes and animal fat, and then slowly carve it with a knife. Paper-cutting artists usually hold a knife vertically and process the paper into the desired pattern according to a certain model. Compared with scissors, one advantage of knife scissors is that they can be processed into various paper-cut patterns at one time. ?

There are three kinds of common paper-cut lanterns in Lantern Festival: one is mainly based on patterns. For example, cut off five bees and put lanterns on them, which means "five grains are abundant (lights)"; Cutting magpies and plums on decorative lights is called "Magpies Climbing Plums"; Cutting five dolls means "five children go to the lighting department" The other is mainly writing. This is consistent with the characters in the calligraphy on lanterns mentioned above. Then there is the fusion of patterns and characters, and the combination of image thinking of patterns and rational thinking of characters will naturally become a unique landscape of the Lantern Festival home.