The new era of the Festival of Lights has been completely owned by the people, making light equipment is also very different from the past, for the light of the requirements of the basic changes in the festival that is, or still according to the seasonal held, the significance of the meaning has been very different.
The ancient festival of lights is not only the Lantern Festival in the first month of the Lantern Festival, in July, the middle of the yuan, August of the Mid-Autumn Festival, there are often lights. After the liberation, the "May Day" Labor Day and "11" National Day, all parts of the country are not celebrated with an event. Square in front of Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People's program lights, should be said to be the most spectacular on earth. Not only is the history of rare, more importantly, or the people's hands to create, and really enjoy **** have it all.
On the Tiananmen festival lights, there have been many good articles and good reports. In addition, I remember especially kindly, but before and after the four-month construction period, the square in the brilliant lights. Because all the organs of the capital work comrades and thousands of citizens, have been enthusiastic and excited in the lights, and workers, farmers, the People's Liberation Army, together, for this historic square and the two sides of the magnificent building had a hand.
From personal experience, after the liberation of many other lights, also so historically significant, give me a deep and unforgettable impression. For example, the lights on the eve of the inauguration of the Thirteen Lings Reservoir Dam is one of them.
In the construction of this reservoir, I and several comrades of the Writers' Association before and after had been to four times: the first time is the initial start, the command post is still located at the foot of the mountain in a small village. The second has begun to dig in the bottom, the command post moved to the dam before the small lonely mountain. The fourth is a week before the inauguration, we are living in tents near the site, the weather is surprisingly hot. Every morning and evening, in addition to separate visits to the model workers, as a rule, must go to the site to see the progress of the project. The day before, I saw everywhere is the size of the pile of soil and stone, everywhere is the handling of soil and stone vehicles and people, the air is full of wires, the ground everywhere there are water pipes across. Below the dam, long chains of stone carriers, cement mixers, and embankment rollers, cranes, rumbling into a sound. Although the dam is increasing in height, everywhere seems to be still messy, not like ten days and a half months can be completed. This evening I and a few comrades and go to see, only to be surprised, the original but a day's work, the site has changed all the way. All the machines are gone, all the soil and stone pile clean, flat and neat like a park, the dike under the empty, the dike is not a person, the whole environment is surprisingly quiet. The stars and moon in the sky embedded in the serene blue air, also like a much larger and closer. Just as we arrived at the dam, suddenly the square below the dam twelve million five-color electric lights are bright, so that we seem to suddenly enter a fairy tale fairyland in general. We floated on this sea of twinkling stars until midnight. This magical and moving lightscape cannot be replaced by any other lightscape at any other time. The next night, when the inauguration ceremony was officially held, about 200,000 workers, peasants and the People's Liberation Army, as well as about 300 professional arts and cultural groups and other folk arts teams participated in the light to perform under the lights. We first watched for a long time on the embankment, and then went down to the embankment to crowd everywhere in the crowd. All kinds of moving scenes under the lights, and there is no way to let the other lights instead of the scene. More than a decade, the country's capital construction throughout the country, hundreds of millions of people under the leadership of the party completed countless reservoirs, bridges, factories, schools, thousands of skyscrapers, each time to celebrate the inauguration ceremony, are bound to have the same enthusiastic celebration of the General Assembly in the light of the candlelit sky under the bustling light held in the body of the people in front of their own affairs, must be with the feelings and we are almost the same, stay in the memory of the lights, want to forget also can not forget! The first time I saw it, it was a very good one, and it was a very good one!
The year before last, I and several comrades of the Writers' Association, in the holy land of the revolution, Jinggangshan Tsiping visit, just in time for the fourth anniversary of the decentralization of young cadres to participate in the construction of mountainous areas. These hundreds of young comrades, are four years ago to leave school, in response to the party's call, from all over the country, on the mountain to build a new mountainous area of new intellectuals, of which women and half. In addition, there are all the Jinggang Song and Dance Troupe, and all the Song and Dance Troupe from the porcelain capital of Jingdezhen. Zhu, the director of the Administration, grew up in a nearby village, joined the Red Army in his teens, followed Chairman Mao on his Long March, and is now back on the mountain to lead the youth in building a new mountainous region. In the past, there were less than twenty households in the 800-meter-high Tsiping, but recently there are more than thirty large and small buildings. Newly completed seven-story building, based on the mountain according to the victory, looking away from the summit of Jinggang Mountain, often in the clouds, green and blue bright, unpredictable, close to the group of peaks, such as each other to give way. Auditorium in the vicinity of the Revolutionary Museum, under the lights of a young, healthy and rosy face, all see the toughness in the lively, for the change of the face of the mountainous areas, with the confidence to overcome the difficulties to complete the work. Over the past four years, these young people, together with local people and PLA soldiers, have participated in the construction of highways, hydroelectric power stations and other open fields, and the achievements of self-thinking transformation are very obvious. After the end of the conference, we and a group of young friends of the Song and Dance Troupe turned back to the guest house, the sky has fallen heavy snow, near and far a white pound sterling. As we walked along, we thought of all the situations in which the Red Army had just come to the mountains. In this kind of light, I was able to connect the past, present and future of the country, and all the scenes gave me an extraordinarily long educational significance. This kind of light is also unforgettable in my life.
Because after the liberation of the opportunity to see so many different backgrounds of the magnificent and solemn lantern scene, from these lanterns to experience the country under the leadership of the Chinese **** production party, hundreds of millions of people are really the master of the house, through the planned, organized, purposeful long-term labor, how to rapidly change the face of the whole country. Society continues to move forward, and the Festival of Lights lantern scene is becoming more and more grand and brilliant, and endowed with a variety of different profound meaning. Looking back at some of the other small local customs and very small-scale lantern festivals of half a century ago, it's like stepping back into a very old historical story.
My hometown is a small county with less than 10,000 residents, but the lion and dragon lantern fireworks were extremely famous in the western counties of Hunan half a century ago. On New Year's Day, each neighborhood has its own lantern. From the first to the twelfth called "send light", just the whole city to play everywhere with gongs and drums. In the daytime, many big gongs and drums perform on the bridge to play in the water, or on eight or nine square tables hovering up and down. In the evening, they play clam shells under the lights, accompanied by fine music. From thirteen to fifteen, it was called "Burning Lanterns", and the main competition was on the other hand to see whose fireworks were outstanding. As usual, I was qualified to be an urchin, and with a hundred or so other urchins of various sizes, I followed the procession to various places inside and outside the city hall, and spent my time with the group in the fireworks. Playing with lights not only to strength, but also to be brave, in order to show that the hero is fearless, when the fireworks rise in the field ping, white light straight down a few feet, some also yell like thunder, these people do not care whether it is "Zhentian Lei" or "tiger downhill", as a rule, have to bare shoulders, face to face and courageous! We were young and not yet qualified to play in the game. We are young, not qualified to participate in this kind of strenuous activities, can only take advantage of the hustle and bustle in the side shouting and cheering. Sometimes we volunteered to help and were allowed to carry a pine torch or a back drum, which was not bad luck. Because always be able to follow the team to go, the horse does not leave the herd, until the sky is almost white, we are burned a burnt, exhausted. The team attached to the old fisherman and clam shell spirit, clam shell spirit to the example of more than twelve or thirteen years old handsome face pretty boy as, the old fisherman
White beard and white hair is also done in a dignified manner, this time of the year are now the original form of the lousy and ridiculous. The band's drums and flutes are also often weak and disorganized and randomly struck. Sometimes in order to invigorate the spirit of the group, the band suddenly and leisurely blowing "kick eight board" to the lion's ear only so shake a few times, the old fisherman and the clam shell spirit that or have to respond to the rhythm of the drums and fiddles, randomly circling the street two circles, not to the end of the song, as usual, paralyzed, and make everyone laugh! Finally concentrated to a hall in front of the point of inspection guys scattered, the main street of the Jiangxi people open store, cloth store, Fujian people open the smoke store, has set off firecrackers and burned open the door to welcome the God of Fortune, the family lives on the river young Miao women, also picking drums and radish silk stretcher on the street to call for sale.
With this experience of playing and burning lamps, when I grew up, I read the poems of the Song Dynasty about the lamp festival, and I felt quite familiar with them, and my experience was also deeper. For example, Wu Wenying's Jade Palace Spring, the first half of the lyrics:
Fuzzy beaver hat to cover the eyebrows of the Golden Cicada Luo cut Hu shirt narrow, shoulder to shoulder to see the small waist, tired of the strong with the idle drum beat.
Written eight hundred years ago on the night of the New Year, a small music and dance team of young women, in the middle of the night when the lights out of the situation, and half a century ago, I saw and heard not too much difference. Because the eight hundred years after the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, but only a shift in the system of government, social change is not too big. As for the post-liberation period, although it is only a decade or so, the society has been fundamentally changed, and my experience has in fact become a historical relic, a kind of customary picture of the past society. Young people in remote and small places may still have some similar but different experiences that can be verified, but young people who have grown up in big cities and have seen a lot of things can no longer easily imagine all kinds of situations.
March 1963, Beijing