Lantern Festival lights are small encyclopedias
Wen Shu Xiao revival
The traditional Spring Festival begins with firecrackers on the Chinese New Year's Eve night and ends with the lanterns on the first night. An earth-shaking sound, a brilliant and dazzling color, reflecting the unique imagination of Chinese.
On the fifteenth day of the first month, the Lantern Festival looks at the lights, the old Beijingers are generally called "visiting the lantern market", or called "noisy flower lanterns", there are also called "stepping on the lantern festival", the Republic of China bamboo branch words have "silver candle shadow in the bright moon, meet each other is a stepping lamp person." Whether it is a "shopping" word, or a "noisy" word, or a "stepping" word, it reflects the publicity of the Lantern Festival at that time. I thought that only When Lichun was called "biting spring", "fighting spring", and "stepping on spring" could it be fought against and compared with it. That momentum is similar to western carnival, right? It's all a catharsis of the mood to welcome the arrival of spring, right?
I admire the wisdom of Chinese, a simple lamp, in our hands, can change a thousand times, showing a rich and endless imagination. In the "Chronicle of Kyoto Customs and Things", there was once such a record of lanterns: "Its lamps have the same size, height, length, and square circle, and there are yarn paper, glass, sheep's horns, and the difference between the Western Ocean, and its painted characters are the figures of the nations, the Three Kingdoms, the Journey to the West, the Fengshen, the Water Margin, the Zhiyi, etc., the flowers are orchids, roses, Xuan, bamboo, and peonies, and the animals are luanfeng, dragons, tigers, even horses, cattle, cats, dogs, fish, shrimps, insects, and ants. "Here, people are already seeing that the lamp is not a lamp, and there are more symbolic meanings and beautiful wishes in the lamp." In the colorful light illusion, there is a traditional Chinese culture, including aesthetics, temperament, interest, prayer and folklore, and many aspects of the lamp, which are gathered together to be a small encyclopedia.
Nowadays, our Spring Festival pays more and more attention to the firecrackers of Chinese New Year's Eve night, accompanied by high technology and wealth, more and more earth-shattering. However, the lanterns of the Lantern Night are not very powerful. Our sense of ceremony during the Spring Festival has become weaker and weaker, and the Lantern Festival at the end of the day is even more tired, as if it is powerless. The Lantern is still eating, but the lamp is not as brilliant and rich as before.
In old Beijing, the festival of lights was in the streets and alleys, among the common people, and only then would there be the kind of "noisy" energy of "making flower lanterns". At that time, the area around qianmen and liulichang was the most brilliant. In the words of Qingzhu Branch, "The lane of the fine horse light car is strange, the good spring is another increase, this evening idle reunion full moon, how many tourists only look at the lights." "It's about the pomp and circumstance of that time. Even in small alleys, in the courtyard, children will carry marquees, air death wind (a simple circular lantern, called "gas death wind", because how to carry it, the wind can not blow out), or small orange lamps, running around the world. Now, the festival of lights has shrunk into parks or television, and even in the streets, high-rise buildings and merchant shops, you can see the lights, but almost the same big red lanterns hang high, can not be compared with the "Kyoto Wind and Things" listed in the dazzling lights. For the lanterns of the Lantern Festival, our imagination seems to be degenerating, and the taste of the Lantern Festival is only a taste of the Lantern Festival.
When I was a child, my family lived in the West Mill Alley on the east side of the front gate building, and the night of the Lantern Festival was one of the most brightly lit places. The other day, I went to this old street and saw the thick iron hooks on the eaves of the main entrance of our compound. At that time, during the Lantern Festival, all kinds of lights and overflowing lights would be hung in front of each yard of a hutong, so that it could truly be called a fire tree and honeysuckle that never sleeps. Today, looking down the old street, under the eaves of a row of gray fish scale tiles in the courtyard, a slip of rusty iron hooks, arranged at an interval of about half a meter, bends and curves with old-fashioned and primitive shapes. More than a century later, they are still there, but the lights will not hang up again. Many things worth cherishing are gradually forgotten by the days, and gradually discarded by our own hands.
Article from: People's Daily Overseas Edition
WeChat Editor of this issue: Meng Xiaoshu
Pictures come to the web