Today is the Lantern Festival,
After today, the "year" is really over.
May the new year be as bright and happy as this night.
The most beautiful thing is the fireworks in the world
Source | Art Tourism Culture
Wang Zengqi
We generally don't call it lanterns there, we call it lantern festivals. The Festival of Lights will take a few days, thirteen lights, seventeen lights down. The "right day" is fifteen...
Kids have their own lights. Rabbit lights, hydrangea lamps, horse lamps... Rabbit lights are mostly made by themselves. Below an ann four rudders can be dragged away. The rabbit lamp is actually not much like a rabbit, the face is round, the eyes are curved, like human eyes, and there are two curved eyebrows! Hydrangea lamps and horse lamps are bought.
The hydrangea lamp is a multi-faceted paper-tied ball with a grate-made shelf with a bamboo pole on the shelf and two rudders under the shelf, holding a bamboo pole in the hand, pushing forward, and the ball keeps rolling. The horse lamp is two segments, one horse head and one horse butt, tied to the body with a strap. Watermelon lights, shrimp toad lights, fish lights, these portable lights, are played by children.
There is one custom that may not be found in the field: looking at the fence. Hardwood rectangular frame, about three feet high, half a foot wide, inlaid with silk, painted on a pen to play the novel character story, installed before the festival of lights, a hall around the screen about thirty, behind the screen to light candles. This is actually a well-lit comic strip.
There are two places on the screen, one is in the side hall of the Lianyang Temple, and the other is in the fire temple attached to the City God Temple. The Lianyang Guan painting is the "List of Fengshen Gods", and the Fire Temple is painted with the "Three Kingdoms". How many years have I watched the screen, but I still look at it every year. It seems that if you don't look at the screen, you don't count as a festival of lights.
Tang Lusun
The Lantern Festival was quite popular during the Song Dynasty, but at that time it was not called the Lantern but called "Floating Yuanzi", and later changed its name to the Lantern. Most of China's provinces eat the Lantern Festival, but the name practices are different from each other. In the north, it is called the Lantern Festival, and in some places in the south it is called Tangyuan, and there are also called Tang tuan and Yuanzi. The names of the north and south are different, and the methods are different.
Take Beiping, for example, from time to time not eating is the old rule of Beiping, until the seventh day of the first month of the first month to prepare the first eight shun star offerings to have a Lantern sale. As for the cold winter night, the wind is biting, and those who have picked up the burden to drink and sell osmanthus lanterns, although it cannot be said that there is none, but most of them are in the Xuannan area, contaminated with the customs of the south, and it is difficult to hear this kind of city sound on the winter nights in the northwest city.
...... Beiping was the capital of the three dynasties of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and everything paid attention to the system, so it also developed the habit of eating at the same time and not eating from time to time. Not to Chongyang does not sell flower cakes, not to Liqiu roast shabu is not listed, so the lantern festival on the first eighteenth day of the first month of the lights, not only the official dim sum shop does not sell lanterns, but also the lantern stalls on the street are also like the morning star. Once you enter the February gate, you want to eat the Lantern Festival, then you have to see you next year.
Shen Congwen
I grew up in a small county town with less than 10,000 residents on the edge of western Hunan Province, but the lion and dragon lantern fireworks were very famous in the counties of western Hunan half a century ago.
During the New Year's Festival, each neighborhood has its own lights. From the first to the twelfth day of the first year is called "sending lights", just the whole city beats gongs and drums to play everywhere. During the day, how big gongs and drums are played on the bridge, or hovered up and down on eight or nine square tables. At night, under the lights, the mussel shell essence is played, accompanied by a delicate music. Thirteen to fifteen is called "burning lights", and the main competition turns to the other side to see whose fireworks are outstanding. As usual, with the qualifications of a naughty boy, and a hundred and ten big and small naughty boys, I followed the team everywhere inside and outside the city, and spent time with everyone in the fireworks of the cannon battle.
Those who play with the lamp must not only have strength, but also have to be brave, in order to show that the hero is fearless. Whenever the fireworks rose in the field, the white light poured out several inches, and some of them roared like thunder, but these people, whether they were "thundering the sky" or "the tiger came down the mountain", as usual, had to go into battle shirtless and bravely face to face.
We were too young to participate in such strenuous activities, so we could only take advantage of the bustle to shout and cheer. Sometimes volunteering to help, allowing you to take a pine torch or carry a drum on your back, is not bad luck. Because they can always follow the team, the horses do not leave the group, until the sky is almost white, and everyone is burned and exhausted.
The team was accompanied by the old fisherman and the mussel shell essence, the mussel shell essence chose more than twelve or thirteen years old handsome and good boys to act, and the old fisherman's white beard and white hair also did it, and at this time they all appeared in their original form, which was ridiculous. The band drum flute also often has a weak board eye scattered random beating. Sometimes in order to cheer up the spirit of the group, the band suddenly and leisurely blows up the "kick eight board", the lion's ears only shake a few times, the old fisherman and the mussel shell essence may have to respond to the rhythm of the drum and flute, when the street randomly two circles, less than the final song as usual paralyzed, provoking everyone to laugh!
Finally, when the guys were scattered in front of the guild hall, the southern goods shops and cloth shops opened by jiangxi people on the main street, the tobacco shops opened by Fujian people, had already set off firecrackers to open the door paper to welcome the god of wealth, and the young Miao women who lived across the river also carried tempeh and radish silk on the street to sell.
Liang Yusheng
Writing riddles on flower lanterns is called "lantern riddles", which is also a traditional Lantern gadget. However, in modern times, due to the time-consuming and laborious production of flower lanterns, riddles are mostly written on hanging slips of paper, and this thing is not limited to the Lantern Festival.
Guessing the riddle is quite painstaking and interesting. It is said that in the early days of the liberation of the mainland, there was a riddle, the puzzle was "Japanese surrender", guessing the ancient celebrities, the riddle was originally "Su Wu", but many people guessed "Qu Yuan". "Original", the atomic bomb also. Some people also use the hat-off box to guess "Li Shimin", which means that Japan surrendered, which is the strength of the people of the world, which is an "old joke".
Another "new joke" is that during the "Cultural Revolution" there was a riddle, the riddle was "smell the foot to take Xichuan, liang stealing thought it is impossible", using the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" Zhuge Liang to dissuade Zhou Yu from taking Xichuan story to hit Mao Zedong's poem, marked "bending the waist grid". The riddle is "Ask Wu Gang He all", bend the waist to go to the middle word, go to the word "Gang" to become "ask Wu He all", which means to ask Wu Guo what force to go in and take Xichuan.
This riddle was originally done very well, but at that time it was criticized for the crime of "great disrespect", on the grounds that Chairman Mao could "bend his waist"? It's ridiculous.
Ice heart
The best thing is still lanterns, Fuzhou dialect, "lamp" and "Ding" homophonous, so the number of lights sent, always more than the number of children, is the meaning of Tim Ding.
At that time, my brothers were still young and would not rob me, and the extra one was always given to me. These lights: paper, yarn, glass... So on the wall of my house hung a "marquee lamp", on which the figure was "Three Ying Zhan Lü Bu", holding a goldfish lamp with two eyes moving, and pulling a "white rabbit lamp" with wheels at his feet in the other hand.
At the same time, the South Back Street where my home is located is originally a lamp market, and most of the streets on this street are lamp shops. The "Wanxing Barrel Stone Shop" in front of my house usually sells all kinds of lamps in addition to selling various large and small barrels for dowry with red paint and gold edges. It is not a lantern that children hold to play with, but a large glass lamp, yarn lamp, filament lamp, horn lamp, etc. painted with delicate flower and bird figures on it, and the Lantern Night is lit up, which is really "flower market lights like day", tourists are weaving, laughing all over the street!
After the Lantern Festival, the annual glorious days are over. When the adults asked us to put together many lanterns that we had played with, and burn them together, they said, "From tomorrow onwards, let's collect our hearts and go to school." We listened in silence, looking at the stars embers of the lanterns on the patio, with an indescribable sense of loneliness, and when we went to bed, the night was really unpleasant!