【Lantern Festival】 Eating lanterns during the Lantern Festival is a traditional custom of the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar in China. The sweet food of the Lantern was said to have originated in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and flourished in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and was not originally called the Lantern. By the end of the Song Dynasty

【Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month】

Eating the Lantern Festival is a traditional custom of the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in the mainland. The sweet food of the Lantern was said to have originated in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and flourished in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and was not originally called the Lantern. It was not until the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty that the name "Lantern" appeared. It is said that because the Mongol nobles entered the Central Plains at that time, the people were displaced, so they rose up to eat the Lantern Festival, taking its homophony with "Yuan Elimination", implying that the feudal rule of the Yuan Dynasty should be eliminated. It is also said that it is different from this, because the fifteenth day of the first month is also called "Shangyuan Festival", and this food is mostly eaten at night, so it got its name. There is also a legend that the ancients divided the year into twelve full moons, so they celebrated the Lantern festival as a festival, indicating that the full moon was spent and all the best. Guangdong, Guizhou, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces call it "Tangyuan", which also contains the meaning of two reunions of people and moons. In modern times, there is another joke circulating: in the early years of the Republic of China, when Yuan Shikai, a thief who stole the country, was particularly taboo about the harmonic sound of "Yuan Que", which was unlucky, and was afraid of rushing to his imperial throne, so he ordered all places to ban the name "Lantern" and change it to "Tang Yuan".

There are many varieties of Lanterns, and from the production method, it is divided into solid Lanterns and Lanterns with filling. The lantern with filling is divided into five kinds: fragrant, spicy, sweet, sour and salty. Sweet is mostly filled with sugar, walnuts, sesame seeds, osmanthus flowers, hawthorn, date paste, "crystal" and other fillings; salty meat can be vegetarian, or the meat is chopped into a single package, or with vegetables, or the vegetables can also be blanched and chopped, seasoned to make filling. Lantern skins are mostly made of rice noodles, which can be boiled or fried. The traditional method of Lantern making, in the early days, was to knead the circle by hand rubbing strips. Nowadays, the production of lanterns, many lantern processing shops to make lanterns have been mechanized. There are many Lantern Shops that enjoy a high reputation among the masses throughout the country, such as: Defang Tangyuan in Changsha, Babao Tangyuan in Guiyang, Lai Tangyuan and Guo Tangyuan in Chengdu, Ningbo Tangyuan in Zhejiang, and Weijia lane Tangyuan in Anqing, Anhui, which are also famous traditional snacks in the country.

The nutritional value and medicinal value of the Lantern are very high. But in terms of raw materials, the Tang Dynasty medicine king called glutinous rice the "valley of the spleen". The "Materia Medica" further discusses: Glutinous rice "replenishes the spleen and stomach, and benefits the valley of lung qi." Warm can nourish the qi, and the qi is inflated, and the body is more hot." These expositions of ancient artists have their own practical basis and are not lacking in scientific reasoning.

There are many ways to eat the Lantern, including boiling, frying, plucking silk, glass, drunkenness, and steaming. Among them, it is most commonly eaten in boiled water.