The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the first full moon night of the year, and it is also the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival. I have carefully prepared essays on celebrating the Lantern Festival for everyone. I hope it will be helpful to everyone. Chapter 1: Lantern Festival with Lantern Festival
In my hometown, it is customary to celebrate the New Year only after the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The Lantern Festival undoubtedly pushes the festive atmosphere that started on New Year’s Eve to a climax. People celebrate the night when the new year begins and the earth returns to spring, which is also a continuation of the celebration of the New Year. According to records, the Lantern Festival has already appeared in the Han Dynasty and has a history of more than 2,000 years in China. In the Tang Dynasty, lantern viewing activities flourished. Lu Zhaolin, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, once wrote in "Watching Lanterns on the Fifteenth Night": "The stars are setting in the Han Dynasty, and the moon is hanging by the building." He wrote about the bustling scene of watching lanterns on the Lantern Festival night. By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Lantern Festival, the Spring Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival were known as the three traditional Chinese folk festivals. "Yuan" means the full moon, and "Xiao" means night, so the Lantern Festival means the first full-moon night of the year. During the Lantern Festival, people often eat Yuanxiao (tangyuan) to celebrate the festival and symbolize family reunion. In addition, there are folk entertainment activities such as hanging lanterns, guessing lantern riddles, welcoming Zigu, walking on stilts, lion dancing, dragon dancing, etc. The Lantern Festival is also called the Lantern Festival or Lantern Festival.
Lighting up lanterns during the Lantern Festival is a traditional custom of our people. Throughout the ages, there have been not only a large number of popular Lantern Festival poems, but also countless interesting Lantern Festival couplets. In the Northern Song Dynasty, when a man named Jia Sidao was guarding Huaiyin (today's Yangzhou), one year he put up lanterns for the Lantern Festival. Someone among the guests picked up a Tang poem and wrote a couplet for the door lantern: "On a moonlit night in three parts of the world, a small red building ten miles away from Yangzhou." It is said that this couplet is the earliest lantern couplet in my country. Since then, people in all dynasties have followed suit and hung wall lantern couplets and door lantern couplets on gates or prominent pillars, which not only adds festive flavor to the Lantern Festival, but also adds content for people who appreciate the lanterns.
Zhang Ying and Zhang Tingyu, who were born in Tongcheng, Anhui Province in the Qing Dynasty, were known as "double bachelors, father and son, and two prime ministers, old and young". They were both good at poetry. One year during the Lantern Festival, the Zhang family decorated lanterns and set off firecrackers as usual. When the old prime minister came out for the joint examination, "The high-burning red candle reflected the long sky, it was bright, and the light spread all over the ground." When Xiao Tingyu was thinking, he heard the sound of fireworks outside the door, and immediately understood, and said to him, "The low-burning fireworks shook the earth, the sound, the air." Spit to the sky. "The dialogue is neat and seamless, which can be called a wonderful pairing.
The most talked about story is probably the story of Wang Anshi in the Northern Song Dynasty who acted as a matchmaker. When Wang Anshi was 20 years old, he went to Beijing to take the exam. He passed by a certain place during the Lantern Festival and admired the lanterns while walking. He saw a large family hanging a revolving lantern high and a couplet hanging under the lantern to recruit couples. The couplet said, "The revolving lantern, the horse running with the lantern, the horse stops when the lantern is turned off." When Wang Anshi saw it, he couldn't answer for a while, so he kept it in his heart. When he arrived in the capital, the examiner came out with a flying tiger flag fluttering in the wind, "Flying tiger flag, flying tiger flag, tiger hiding in flag roll." Wang Anshi responded by recruiting relatives and was selected as a Jinshi. When I returned home, I passed by that family's house and heard that no one had come out to show off the wedding couplet. So I responded with the examiner's wedding couplet and was recruited as my soon-to-be son-in-law. A coincidental couplet actually brought about two major happy events for Wang Anshi.
"A Sheng song spring is like the sea, and the night with thousands of lights is like day." There are countless poems by literati and poets in the past dynasties praising the New Year's Eve lanterns, which are still interesting to read today. The poem "The Fifteenth Night of the First Month" by Su Weiwei, a poet of the Tang Dynasty It says, “The trees and flowers are blooming, and the iron locks of the star bridge are opening. The dark dust follows the horse, and the bright moon follows the person. "It depicts the bustling scene where the lights and the moon shine together, and there are so many tourists. Zhang Yue, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, once praised it in a poem: "The door of the calyx tower is fresh with rain and dew, and the people of Chang'an City are peaceful. The dragon holds the fire tree with thousands of lanterns in its mouth, the chicken steps on the lotus and lives forever in spring. " vividly describes the scene of lantern viewing during the Lantern Festival. Li Shangyin described the grand scale of lantern viewing at that time with the poem "The moonlight lights filled the imperial city, and the incense chariots and precious chariots overflowed the thoroughfare." It is worthy of praise and should be recommended first. Tang Dynasty poet Cui Ye's "Shangyuan Night" "Don't rush the jade leaking copper pot, the iron gate is clear and the gold lock is open; Who can sit leisurely when seeing the moon, and where can I hear the lamp and not look at it. "Although there is no positive description of the Lantern Festival here, it contains a very happy, lively and bustling scene.
The Lantern Festival in the Song Dynasty was unprecedentedly grand, and the lantern market was even more spectacular. Su Dongpo's poem said, "Every house is lit with lights. Yes, music and singing are everywhere. "Fan Chengda also wrote in a poem, "Wutai, a prosperous place in ancient and modern times, prefers Lantern Festival shadow and lantern shows. The "shadow lantern" in the poem is the "revolving lantern". The great poet Xin Qiji once had a poem praising the grand occasion of the Lantern Festival that has been passed down through the ages. BMW's carved cars fill the road with fragrance. The sound of the wind flute moved, the light of the jade pot turned, and fish and dragons danced all night long.
The Lantern Festival, full of poetry and romance, is often associated with love. There are many poems in the past dynasties that use the Lantern Festival to express love and affection. Ouyang Xiu of the Northern Song Dynasty wrote a poem: "On the Lantern Festival this year, the moon and the lights are still the same; when I don't see the person from last year, my spring shirt sleeves are filled with tears." He expresses the pain of missing his lover.
On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival is held. The key to the celebration of the Lantern Festival lies in the word "hao". In the 1980s, in order to enrich the festival life of residents in the mining area, the mine where I lived organized employees to carry out entertainment activities such as welcoming purple aunts, walking on stilts, lion dances, and dragon lantern dances every year during the Lantern Festival. As soon as the gongs and drums were heard, all the children in the mine followed the long team and ran all over the mining area. Everywhere the team went, firecrackers were set off to welcome the entire mining area, which became a beautiful scenery in the mining area festival. With the rapid development of network information and the diversification of various entertainment activities, the mine has not held dragon lantern dance activities for many years, and the mine suddenly became much deserted during the festival.
After watching enough of the ridiculous spoofs of entertainment programs on TV, people have shown more love for traditional folk entertainment activities, their liveliness and their rich cultural heritage.
In addition to lantern viewing and entertainment, there is also the custom of eating Lantern Festival during the Lantern Festival. Yuanxiao is also known as Tangyuan, Shuotuan, Yuanzi, etc. Eating glutinous rice balls during the Lantern Festival was first seen in the Southern Song Dynasty poet Song Bida's "Pingyuan Continuation". The book contains a record of "cooking glutinous rice balls during the Lantern Festival, which seems not to have been mentioned by the predecessors." The floating circles in the Song Dynasty were also called glutinous rice balls. By the Southern Song Dynasty, Lin'an's Shangyuan Festival food included lactose dumplings, yam dumplings, pearl dumplings, Chengsha dumplings, kumquat water dumplings, Chengfen water dumplings and glutinous rice balls. I remember that when I was a child, it was difficult to eat rice dumplings when I was poor. My mother often ground millet into powder to make dumplings, and then put the dumplings into a porridge pot and cooked them for us to eat. Although these dumplings were bland and tasteless, we could eat them when we were poor. It also tastes quite sweet. Now that conditions are good, you can buy all kinds of fashionable glutinous rice balls in supermarkets. There are Missing, Daoxiangcun, Sanquan, Holiland, Wanchai San, etc., with a complete range of varieties, including fragrant black sesame glutinous rice balls, refreshing and smooth sesame paste glutinous rice balls, sour and sweet appetizing hawthorn glutinous rice balls, and delicate-tasting bean paste glutinous rice balls, sweet and delicious Lotus paste glutinous rice balls and glutinous and sweet jujube paste glutinous rice balls. There are also fashionable chocolate glutinous rice balls, barbecued pork glutinous rice balls, lotus glutinous rice balls, five-nut glutinous rice balls...
The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the first full moon night of the year, and it is also the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival. The white, round glutinous rice balls represent the good fortune of reunion and good luck, symbolizing reunion and happiness. For people today, the Lantern Festival is not only a festival for eating and playing, but also the inheritance of a culture that crystallizes national wisdom. Chapter 2: Lantern Festival fills the streets with lanterns
People in the mountains of Qinling Mountains take traditional festivals very seriously, especially the first of the four seasons and the first grand festival after the New Year.
The five-day New Year is as fast as lightning. As soon as the "breaking five" passes, people start to make promises and prepare for the Lantern Festival. I really admire the word "nao", which can be said to be the finishing touch and expressive of the word. People are like a tide, cars are like a dragon, and the traffic is squirming on the street. Some are shoulder to shoulder, some are sweating like rain, and some are a sea of ??people. It seems that they are always unable to express their feelings. After getting tired of eating big fish and meat, the noises and shouts became clearer and more like the melodious calls of oriole, and their magnetism suddenly increased. In today's busy market, the protagonists have changed genders, and it is women who dominate the scene.
The long street turned into a sea of ??red lanterns. The sea was crowded with people, and the lanterns were surprisingly beautiful, which made people choosing lanterns find it hard to walk fast, as if they could only stay in such a queue. It’s just as satisfying to hold on to the New Year, hold up the Lantern Festival, and embrace a new spring in your arms. There are lanterns that "pretend" with animals, plants, characters, birds and beasts, there are flowers, birds, fish and insects that "change", there are plum blossoms, orchids, bamboos and chrysanthemums that "grow", there are Mickey Mouse, Tang Lao Crow, Sun Wukong, Pig Bajie and Tang Monk that "walk". This year's lanterns are even more... Especially attractive to children. Children always want to stay in the New Year atmosphere for a long time and never grow up. They are like the characters in fairy tales and cartoons, who are always cute. The exact answer can be found from those innocent and childlike faces.
You know how important lanterns are to women? Most of them come from the countryside. The rural women took this trip to the city because they didn't have enough sightseeing in the city to do New Year's shopping. As long as they have arrived, they are not going to rush home. The sun is still high anyway, and the transportation is so convenient now. They can get on the bus to the village and get home in no time. Besides, the last bus is still early. There are a dazzling array of lantern varieties. It is not easy to choose a pair of lanterns that are economical, durable, and more satisfactory. Women are born financial experts. They will select through comparison and identification until they are selected. Only when the lanterns you like the most are you willing to put money into your pocket.
The folk custom of lanterns stands in the hearts of the people like the majestic Qinling Mountains. When her daughter gave birth to her first child, her grandmother made sure to "send lights". Grandma gives lanterns, which means that the children will live a long life and be blessed with happiness, wealth, longevity and happiness for a lifetime. This lantern will be given for three years. In the first year, you will buy one lantern, and in the second year, you will also get one. In the third year, it is called three When the New Year lanterns are full, a pair of lanterns must be given, which means perfection. Flower lanterns must also be accompanied by flower buns and candles. The middle-aged woman in front of me must be sending lanterns to her grandson. Look at how carefully she picked them!
The young women were holding and pulling their babies, even like kangaroo mothers, putting their children in the "bags" on their shoulders and drifting with the crowd. There were even pregnant women carrying babies, still walking in the crowd. It's crowded, as if it's not a Lantern Festival if it's not crowded, and if it's not crowded, all the energy in the body can't be dispersed. In front of the lantern stall, it almost became an airtight wall of people. Curious children, the harder they are to reach the high-hanging lanterns, the more they have to pick up their feet and have to reach them with their hands. However, they are very disappointed. Fortunately, children are the most forgetful, and after a while they turn their attention to another lantern stall. When children divert their attention, adults have to be extra careful. If they don't pay attention, they won't know where they will be squeezed into a corner of the sea of ??lanterns.
In the sea of ??lanterns, rural women choose at will, bargain hard, and celebrate the Lantern Festival on the first day of the lunar month. They come prepared, with time, energy, and wisdom. The New Year's delicacies, the stalwart men, and the New Year's joy have nourished everyone and made them full of energy, and made everyone open-eyed and confident.
If the owner of the lantern stall is a grown man, even though he is handsome and attractive, and the beautiful women are eye-catching, for the sake of a prosperous business, how can he withstand the hard work of the beautiful woman? So I have to "bear the pain of giving up my love" and get rid of the "ecstasy" in front of me as soon as possible. I will force myself to bite the bullet and simply lower the price of the lanterns to the lowest price and sell them to smart women. Let's forget it. Small profits but quick turnover. The country woman was naturally delighted and secretly happy, but she refused to show her white teeth. The secret must not be revealed.
Once the lantern stall owner you meet is a very shrewd woman, it will be difficult to say anything. Woman against woman, needle against awn, they are evenly matched, just like weightlifters of the same weight class meeting each other, not to mention meeting on a narrow road, at least half a pound versus eight ounces, there will always be a secret price competition like an arm wrestling, anyway, the child likes this. A pair of lanterns are now available, but now, even if they are given a pair of golden lanterns, the child will not exchange them, so the country woman has no choice but to bargain hard.
The child was already impatient with waiting, and the mother was still haggling over the price. I finally got the lanterns, but I still need some simple "training" from the stall owner on how to turn on and off the lanterns and how to change the batteries. In this era of electrification, everything about the lanterns has to be electrified. Besides, there is no instruction manual and no simple training. OK? The papery lanterns of the past have quietly withdrawn from the lantern market. Besides, the paper lantern cannot withstand heavy tossing. If you are not careful, or the wind blows wildly, once the candles burning in the lantern fall over, it will immediately ignite the lantern, and the lantern will immediately turn into a blazing fire. A child's instinctive reaction to a fireball is to immediately extinguish the fire. Although the fireball was quickly extinguished, can the lanterns like that be put on and continue to go crazy? Chapter 3: Talking about the Lantern Festival
I have known about the traditional festival of Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month since I was very young, but since I was a child, I have never experienced the "noisy" event on the 15th day of the first lunar month. When I was young, life was hard, and city people didn’t pay much attention to the Lantern Festival. On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, every household would buy some Lantern Festivals and eat them boiled or deep-fried. Families with better conditions and the leftover New Year's goods from the Spring Festival took out some good dishes and the whole family sat together in a lively manner. They said it was a festival, but in the young mind, it was a farewell. Say goodbye to the holidays and say goodbye to the Spring Festival.
After fifteen, everything returned to normal. The so-called return to normal means that the brothers and sisters who went to the countryside to celebrate the New Year are returning to their hometowns, and the days of joy and joy of eating and drinking have come to an end. Life is about to return to normal again, and the Spring Festival, the annual gathering of the whole family, is over. Therefore, the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month every year is not a festival worth celebrating, but it is the beginning of another farewell, and the meaning of farewell is very strong. Although everyone tacitly understood each other and tried their best to avoid the topic of the upcoming separation, the sadness could still be traced in the low-pitched conversation. Therefore, the Lantern Festival when I was a child was painful to Yi Zhong, and it was the most unpleasant holiday among all the festivals.
For families with poorer living conditions, they just add some Yuanxiao on top of the usual vegetables and rice. Although it is calmer, there is also less sadness that is deliberately hidden.
The firecrackers prepared for the Spring Festival are basically gone. What is available is just three or five kickers and four or five cannons for lanterns. Therefore, there are not many things to attract children. However, after dinner, the children will each have a lantern they made by themselves, either made of glass cans or bottles, or made of red paper. No matter what style, a candle is lit inside, held up with a stick, and shined everywhere. Especially in the dark corners, he kept chanting: "Photo, photo, caterpillar, the caterpillar's head will hurt if you take a photo of it." It is said that if you take a photo like this, no insects will appear for a year. This should be the only fun and "fun" of the Lantern Festival, right?
Later I learned from adults that the fifteenth day of the first lunar month was a very grand festival in the countryside. Dragon lantern dancing, yangko dancing, lantern festivals, operas, etc. are all happening for three to five days. It is so lively that it can be called "noisy". Although I envy and yearn for it, because I am not involved in it, I cannot experience the commotion, so I just go with the flow and live a relatively quiet Lantern Festival.
When talking about the Lantern Festival, we have to talk about the Lantern Festival. At that time, the Lantern Festivals were of a single variety and style, round, white, and unpackaged. They were sold in bulk, and people could only buy them in restaurants. Every Lantern Festival, various restaurants will concentrate manpower and material resources in advance to produce Lantern Festivals in large quantities for citizens to purchase.
I have purchased Yuanxiao many times by chance and had the honor to watch the making process of Yuanxiao with my own eyes. The so-called making of Yuanxiao is to put the Yuanxiao stuffing cut into squares into a container filled with flour (sticky rice flour) and keep rolling it. As it turns, the Yuanxiao stuffing will be filled with flour, and that is Yuanxiao. The better Yuanxiao is dipped in some flour and has a thin layer of skin, but the filling tastes big and the skin is thin; the inferior Yuanxiao is coated with layers of flour and there is no filling in one bite. Even when people enjoy Yuanxiao, they often eat Yuanxiao without fillings, which is quite frustrating. But don't complain, it's definitely not a lie. There was no such thing as fraud in those days. The reason why "fake Yuanxiao" can appear is that individual flour sticks together during the rolling process to form dough, which is bought as Yuanxiao. This is purely due to the production process.
I never ate glutinous rice balls when I was a child, and I didn’t even hear about glutinous rice balls until I was quite old. Like the Lantern Festival, it is an exclusive food of the Lantern Festival.
Later, I often ate glutinous rice balls and thought they were more delicious than Yuanxiao. At least they all had fillings. Later, when I learned about the making process of glutinous rice balls, I realized that the reason why each glutinous rice dumpling has fillings is because the fillings are wrapped one by one like dumplings. Of course it can't be without fillings.
Now during the Lantern Festival, I still choose glutinous rice balls. It has less to do with whether there are fillings and more to do with the softness and smoothness of the glutinous rice balls. Nowadays, people are in a fiercely competitive environment, working hard and have some leisure time. Who doesn't want more comfort and comfort?
Tangyuan is good, but now the fillings of glutinous rice balls are even better. There are only things you can’t think of, and there’s nothing you can’t buy. Moreover, glutinous rice balls have become a popular household food and are sold in supermarkets all year round.
Tangyuan has many benefits, but I have never heard of anyone eating it fried. This should be where glutinous rice balls are inferior to Yuanxiao, right? During the Lantern Festival when I was a child, more sophisticated families would specially fry some Lantern Festivals to eat. Deep-frying Yuanxiao is a technical job. As the oil temperature rises, the Yuanxiao gradually heats and expands in the oil pan. Some of the Yuanxiao stuffing that is not tightly wrapped will splash out from the exploded opening. The sugary liquid under the high temperature will stick to the limbs, which is Severe burns. Therefore, every year during the Lantern Festival, people are burned by fried Yuanxiao, but people still take the risk of frying it every year. The temptation of delicious food is endless. An old saying goes: Man dies for wealth, and bird dies for food. It really makes sense.
We are celebrating the Lantern Festival now. Although the country is the only folk festival that does not include the fifteenth day of the first lunar month as a public holiday, with the improvement of living standards, people’s attention to this festival has also shown an upward trend, and various celebrations There are endless forms, which can be called "noisy".
One of the manifestations of trouble is consumption. Merchants build momentum and publicity, and citizens follow suit and rush to buy. This rush buying is not limited to food. Some people have even excluded food from the rush buying process and turned their attention to clothing, luxury goods, and even cultural toys and other items. Chinese people have continued the past custom of rushing to buy food during the New Year and holidays and have switched to rushing to buy other commodities. Although Yi Zhong is not in this category and will never enter this category, he does not exclude such rush buying and consumption. When people's living standards gradually rise, there must always be a way for people to experience the satisfaction after consumption, and the resulting gratitude to the country and society. Wouldn’t it be great to take advantage of the Lantern Festival?
The second form of making trouble is to set off fireworks. Nowadays, setting off fireworks during the Lantern Festival has gradually shifted from personal behavior to corporate behavior. Especially those private enterprises with good profits want to do better this year; those with poor profits want to turn around this year. Therefore, on the last day of the fireworks display time limit, those huge fireworks and firecrackers will be set off on the main street. The height reached by the fireworks, the size of the blooms, and the dazzling degree were no less effective than a professional salute. Of course, the RMB is also huge. What you want is to be eye-catching and stunning. Moreover, this momentum is likely to intensify. In some bustling commercial districts, traffic jams often occur on the Lantern Festival because people set off fireworks on the streets. But people are no longer bothered by the congestion, but stop and watch. What they like is this noise;
The third form of the noise is the celebration program organized by the government. As people's living standards improve, the government changes its mindset and embeds the concept of having fun with the people into its work. Therefore, on the days when everyone is celebrating, traditional programs such as floats, yangko teams, dragon lantern dances, and lantern festivals are organized, and even festive programs that were not available in the city in the past are refined and brought into the city to celebrate the Lantern Festival together.
As Yuanxiao and glutinous rice balls become more and more refined, people’s lives will become more and more refined. I thought that this was everyone's common sense.