Day 73 The Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival is the 15th date after Chinese New Year, which is the second important festival besides the New Years Eve. The tradition starts from 2000 years ago, when the emperor of ‘Han’ proclaimed it as an official festival. During the Lantern festival, Chinese ancestors performed fete ceremony of the god ‘Tai Yi’. Who is believed as the origin of the universe. The conventional way of celebrating this festival has evolved into many different forms, but there are still two major traditions remain.

Chinese will eat the traditional food ‘Yuan Xiao’ during the Lantern festival. That is why the festival has been referred as ‘Yuan Xiao’ festival in China. This traditional Chinese snack is basically the sweet dumplings made of glutinous rice flour. In Chinese, the word ‘Yuan’ is pronounced the same as ‘round’. So this snack would be made to oral shape. In fact, the word ‘Yuan’ expresses the meaning of ‘the first element’, and ‘Xiao’ means ‘night’. Therefore the term ‘Yuan Xiao’ combines the idea of the ‘ primary night’. The filling of ‘Yuan Xiao’ would normally use sweet flavor such as: sweetened bean paste, semen sesame nigrum or jujube paste. Personally, my favorite stuffing is black sesami. People would combine water with the paste and put them together into a shallow bucket filled with glutinous rice flour. After that, they would shake the bucket in order to surround the paste with flour. Eventually, the paste and the flour would comprises the ‘Yuan Xiao’, which has the appearance of 2 centimeter diameter’s white balls. Since the process includes shaking the bucket, Chinese also called it ‘shake Yuan Xiao’ . 

Another significant tradition in the Lantern festival is obviously related to the lantern. Chinese people would make various festival lanterns during the day and hang them on the street or released them into the river. The old legend said that these lanterns would be the bacon to guide the fairy from the heaven to land, hence people could be blessed. Inside the lantern, people would write their wish for the new year and send it to float down the stream. In addition, there are other special lantern which had Chinese riddle written inside. At ancient times, people could pick up these lanterns once they figured out the answer. The owners of the lantern would invite the one with the correct answer to have a drink with them.

Although there are plenty traditions from the past for the lantern festival, what remains in normal people’s lives is unite the family and enjoy the ‘Yuan Xiao’ together. The lanterns are placed by the government rather than civilians. Nevertheless, it is still an important festival in Chinese culture.