Blooming Flowers And Full Moon，The Lantern Festival
Feb 3, 2023
Lantern Festival is a traditional festival in China, It is the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. This is the first full moon of the New Year, a symbol of unity and perfection. The lantern festival is celebrated everywhere.
Lantern Festival night, the streets decorated with lanterns, people enjoy lanterns, guess riddles, eat Tangyuan, It will continue from the New Year's Eve celebration. This has become the custom of generations.
Eating Tangyuan
Eating Tangyuan is an important tradition for the Lantern Festival. Tangyuan is the special food of Lantern Festival. Lantern Festival originated in the Song dynasty, the first people called it" Floating yuanzi", later called "Lantern". Tangyuan is filled with sugar, walnuts, roses, cinnamon, sesame seeds, nuts, jujube paste and bean paste. It is made of glutinous rice flour and can be boiled, fried and steamed, the beautiful moral of happiness. That's how the Lantern Festival got its name.
Watching Lanterns
Decorating and hanging lanterns is the main tradition of the festival, with lanterns big and small hung around households, parks, streets and other public spaces. Red lanterns of various shape and type will attract countless visitors to watch. Children will hold self-made or bought lanterns. On the Lantern Festival night ,the moon illuminates the dark sky while many lanterns shine bright colors on the earth.
Lantern riddles
Solving riddles on lanterns has been a popular tradition since the Song Dynasty. People write riddles on paper and stick them to the lanterns and if someone guesses correctly, they can pull the riddle off. The notes often contain messages of good fortune and wishes.
Lion dances
The lion dance is one of the oldest traditions to celebrate the Chinese New Year. In ancient times, people regarded the lion as a symbol of bravery and strength and believed the dance could drive away bad fortune to protect people and their livestock. The custom has continued to the modern day and lion dances are performed at important events on the Chinese calendar, such as the Lantern Festival, to bring good luck.
Dragon dance
Dragon dance is a form of traditional dance and performance in Chinese culture. Like the lion dance it is most often seen in festival celebration. The dance is performed by a team of dancers who manipulate a long flexible figure of a dragon using poles positioned at regular intervals along the length of the dragon.
Chinese dragons are a symbol of China, and they are believed to bring good luck to people, therefore the longer the dragon in the dance, the more luck it will bring to the community.
Walking on stilts
Walking on stilts, or Cai Gaoqiao, is another popular traditional performance for the Lantern Festival, especially in Northern China. According to the archives, our Chinese ancestors began using stilts to help them gather fruits from trees. This practical use of stilts gradually developed into a kind of folk dance.
Blooming Flowers And Full Moon，SILIBASE SILICONE wish you Happy Lantern Festival. Everything goes well in the new year.
