Lantern Festival
By 全日制5級班 王麗萍
Lantern Festival is an important traditional festival. It is the 15th of the first lunar month every year. The night is also the first full moon night in the year.
Lantern Festival experienced a very long forming progress. As early as 2000 years ago, about the West Han Dynasty, it had existed. On this day, emperors would go to the palace named “gan quan” to worship the heaven. But it really got a big development by the East Han Dynasty. Ming Emperor promoted Buddhism, he heard of that there was a religious practice to use lighted lanterns to worship the Buddha on this day, so he made an order that all palace and temples should light all lanterns at the night. While common people also were ordered to hang up lighted lanterns, it gradually became a grand festival along with spreading Buddha’s teachings. But it became a true festival after the Han and Wei Dynasties.
Today, in many parts of China, people still maintain some same tradition to celebrate Lantern Festival. For example, in northern China, people eat sweet dumpling made of glutinous rice flour, it is named as “Yuan Xiao”. However, in southeast of China, people eat “tang yuan”, a kind of stuffed small dumpling ball made of glutinous rice flour. They have different craft and procedures. The surface of yuan xiao is dry, while tang yuan’s surface is wet. So yuan xiao can be preserved for longer time. In many areas of China, people can feast their eyes on the different kinds of festive lanterns. They look very beautiful and romantic. With some riddles written on them, people like guessing lantern riddles to get a small prize and so on.
However, there are some different customs in some areas. Here is an example from my hometown located in Suzhou. On this day, people will prepare some rice flour and red dates, vegetables, bean products, peanuts etc. and cook them together in a big pot. The rice gruel will be very delicious. Each people can eat 2 or 3 bowls. The delicious gruel also be used as sacrifices to ancestors. Some people who were ill on 1st day of the first lunar month will come in and ask others for some gruel. They wish to be far away from illness in the year. Finally, there is a very old ceremony that was remembered deeply on my mind. That is, we like lifting a torch to our fields. We walk along the ridges and shout at the top of our voice at the night. It means that people wish to prevent the crops from insects and pray for a good harvest.
點評: 這篇文章非常地道的向我們展示了民間對元宵節的重視, 不僅在歷史上更在于人們對安逸生活的情感向往上,尤其是最后一段中作者還描述了她自己家鄉的元宵風俗讓我們受益良多!
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