Lantern Festival

The first full moon

The Lantern Festival, Yuanxiao jie, falls on the fifteenth day of the first month, the first full moon of the year, and marks the end of the New Year celebrations. It was already an important festival under the Western Han dynasty. There are many accounts of its origin: one tells that Emperor Ming, an advocate of Buddhism, saw monks lighting lanterns in temples on this night and ordered households, temples and the palace to do the same.

Families walk the streets with lanterns, and riddles are written on them for others to guess — caidengmi. Tangyuan, sweet rice balls in soup, are eaten on this day.

Two famous lantern fairs

The Qinhuai Lantern Fair, also called the Jinling Lantern Fair, is held every year at the Confucius Temple in Nanjing between the Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival, and peaks on the fifteenth. Its history reaches back to the Eastern Wu period. Under the Ming, when Nanjing was the capital, the Hongwu Emperor extended the lantern nights to ten, the longest in Chinese history. A Nanjing saying goes that if you don’t see the lanterns at the Confucius Temple, you haven’t celebrated the New Year. In 2006 the fair was listed as national intangible cultural heritage.

In Zigong, Sichuan, a great lantern fair is held each year from the Spring Festival to the Lantern Festival in the city’s Lantern Park. Customs of lighting lanterns at New Year go back to the Tang and Song dynasties there. The first lantern fair of the People’s Republic was organised by the city in 1964; since then the lanterns have grown from bamboo, wood and silk into large steel-framed groups, and because many dinosaur fossils have been found in Zigong, the event is now called the Zigong International Dinosaur Lantern Festival.