People's activities on the Lantern Festival
1, Lantern
The day of the festival folk have hanging lanterns, playing lamps, watching lamps lamp custom, so also known as the Festival of Lights. Lantern Festival began in the Western Han Dynasty, the first month of the fifteenth is the climax of the annual Lantern Festival fireworks. Before the arrival of the first month of the fifteenth, the streets are full of lanterns, flowers everywhere, lights swaying, people touring the streets, enjoy the beauty of the night.
2, guessing riddles
Also known as riddles, is China's unique rich national style of a traditional form of folk recreational activities, is the ancient Lantern Festival began to circulate the characteristics of the activities. On the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the traditional folk should hang up colored lanterns, fireworks, and then there are good people to write riddles on paper strips, pasted on the colorful lanterns for people to guess.
Because the riddles can enlighten wisdom and cater to the festive atmosphere, so the response of many people, and then riddles gradually become an indispensable program of the Lantern Festival. The riddles added to the festive atmosphere and demonstrated the ingenuity of the ancient working people and their desire for a better life.
3, the dragon dance
Legends as early as in the Yellow Emperor period, in a kind of "qingjiao" large-scale song and dance, appeared by the people played the image of the dragon head and bird body, and then choreographed six dragons interspersed with each other in the dance scene, the Han Dynasty Zhang Heng's "Xijing Fu" in the dance of the dragon for the vivid portrayal. The Dragon Dance is popular in many parts of China. The Chinese people revere the dragon as a symbol of good luck.
4, Lion Dance
Lion Dance is an excellent folk art in China, every Lantern Festival or gatherings and celebrations, folk lion dance to come to cheer. This custom originated in the Three Kingdoms period, began to popularize the North and South Dynasties, has been more than a thousand years of history.
5, rowing a dry boat
Folklore says that rowing a dry boat is to commemorate Dayu, who is credited with curing the water. Dry boat is not a real boat, more than two pieces of thin board, sawed into a boat shape, bamboo and wood tied into, and then masked with colored cloth, sets tied to the girl's waist, as sitting in the boat, holding an oar, do rowing posture, one side running, one side singing some local ditties, while singing and dancing, popular in many parts of China.
Food for the Lantern Festival
New Year's Eve to eat Lantern Festival, the custom can be traced back to the Song Dynasty. At that time, it was popular to eat a novelty food on the Lantern Festival called "floating Yuanzi", later called "Lantern".
The north is still called "Lantern Festival", the south is called "dumplings", which are two kinds of food with different practices and tastes, but the fillings are almost the same, including sugar, roses, sesame seeds, bean paste, yellow cinnamon, walnuts, nuts, jujube puree and so on, and there are also newly developed flower fillings and other fillings. There are also newly developed flower fillings or chocolate fillings, with glutinous rice flour wrapped around the filling into a round shape, using methods such as boiling in soup, deep-frying, steaming, etc., with the meaning of reunion and beauty.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Lantern Festival