Lantern Festival in China

According to the traditional Chinese calendar, the fifteen day of the first month a year is lantern festival. Lantern festival is the first important festival in a year and it derives from about two hundred years ago.

On the basis of Chinese culture, people need to light up many lanterns to celebrate. In this day, young ladies and gentle men can go out to appreciate these beautiful lanterns and meanwhile, they can have a date with their lover. In old times, there is a conundrum in every lantern and people can get together to have a guess.

The derivation of lantern festival differs from a place to another place, but they have a common topic and it is reunion. In that night, all the family members get together to eat glue pudding and this indicates that they will not leave each other for ever. Glue pudding is made of sticky rice and various stuffing such as sesame, semen juglandis, nutlet, white sugar and jujube paste. It is so popular that it becomes the common food in our dinner table. Actually, glue pudding is not suitable for breakfast. Glue pudding is high in heat and sugar and lower in nutrient. For such a kind of food, it makes people be fat easily. Besides, in the morning, our gastrointestinal function is relatively weak. Glue pudding is made of sticky rice which is not easy for people to digest in the morning. Therefore, eating glue pudding in the morning frequently will cause indigestion, which may present gastric acid and thus affect people’s work.

During lantern festival, there are many other activities such as beating a drum, playing Yangge dance, walking on stilts and playing lion dance. Among these, playing lion dance is one of the typical folk art. In old days, when there is grand festival, playing lion dance will be present to celebrate.

Nowadays, with the development of age, Lantern Festival is not as alive as before. So many activities have been discarded because of the busy work or other things and only eating glue pudding in the nigh is reserved. In addition, with the increase of food quality, different kinds of glue pudding are made to celebrate. Glue pudding is the delicious food, and I hope every foreign visitor has chance to have a taste.