What activities are there in Fujian Lantern Festival?

Lantern Festival is one of the most important folk festivals in Fujian, and it is also the most concentrated and colorful festival of various folk literary and artistic activities in a year. A few days before and after the Lantern Festival, all parts of Fujian almost became a sea of revelry.

Lantern Festival is the most traditional folk activity of Han nationality, but in western Fujian, besides the common lanterns displayed in street houses or fixed places, there are their own unique lanterns.

Liancheng Xi Zhi's "unpacking lamp", a big lantern is composed of nearly a hundred small lanterns of all kinds, and its shape is very complicated and exquisite. One person holds it, and several families go out together on the first day of the first month. On the eleventh day of the first month, all lanterns will go out together, and the sound of gongs and drums will be heard. From the head of the village to the end of the village, the huge team stretches for miles and is magnificent.

The "story lanterns" from the 13th to 17th of the first month in Yongdingfu City are also very lively. The "story" is played by young men and women, carried in sedan chairs, accompanied by flower basket lights, tea-picking lights, carp lights, lion elephant lights, bat lights and dragon lights. And accompanied by gongs, drums, gongs, firecrackers, firecrackers, until midnight fireworks, burning flowers.

After the colorful lanterns in Yongding Xiayang were finished, they were also placed in front of their ancestors' graves, showing the Hakka people's spirit of ancestor worship and filial piety.

The water lanterns on Lianchengping are all kinds of lanterns carried on rafts in the pond in front of the ancestral temple, surrounded by a fan band of ten people, and two boys walked around the pond with Shui Ying lanterns and long music, which attracted applause from the viewers on the shore and had a special flavor. In xinluo district, there are hundreds of kinds of lights, dances and songs of various tea-picking lantern teams, which attract people's attention.

Welcoming the past is a very important program of folk Lantern Festival in western Fujian. "Antiquities" are children disguised as various ancient figures, fixed on iron frames and marching. The most famous is "Through the Past" by Liancheng Luo Fang. Its characteristics are large scale and strong competitiveness. The shed of ancient events required many mature men to take turns carrying and running.

On the morning of the fifteenth day of the first month, after running on land, I went to the river for a counter-current race in the afternoon. There are a sea of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Accompanied by the sound of gongs and drums, firecrackers, cymbals and shouts, you chase after me, which is intense and exciting, and is called "Hakka Country Carnival".

In some towns and villages in Changting, Yongding and other counties, there are also many such "welcoming the past" activities, but only processions are held, not races. There is also a kind of "dragon carrying antiquities", that is, dragons are at the head and tail, and children dressed in various ancient costumes are sitting in the middle, and dozens of people are carrying it in the parade. There are also "ancient things on horseback" in Chengxi Village of Liancheng.

In Yongdingkan City, Daxi City, Pumice City and other places in Chen Dong, "vehicle-mounted antique" with antique iron frames installed on scooters or cars appeared.

During the folk Lantern Festival in western Fujian, there are activities to celebrate dragon lanterns everywhere. But in addition to the usual dragon lanterns, western Fujian has its own strong local characteristics.

In some parts of Fujian, there are many unique Lantern Festival folk activities. For example, in Liancheng Xinquan and Changting Fangtu, tens of thousands of long firecrackers form various patterns of "burning firecrackers" on the ground; Liancheng has a Tianchuan victory meeting, starting with dancing the green lion and the yellow lion, and then performing various boxing, swords, spears and halberds.

In addition, there is the Lantern Festival in which the mage from Subang, Longyan performs all kinds of difficult movements on a knife ladder tens of meters high, throwing millet, chopsticks and coins down.

These colorful folk activities to celebrate the Lantern Festival are a kind of cultural accumulation in Fujian for hundreds of years, which to some extent reflects the social outlook, outlook on life and values of Fujian people.