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lantern chinoiseCette celebrates the lanterns where light is queen cl?t the cycle of the festivities of the New year. Nocturnal feast, one names it besides sometimes "small New year" (xiaoguonian). The population (nowadays, especially the children accompanied by their parents) fate for a walk to the night fallen a lantern to the hand. Although the traditional models (huadeng..) in paper illuminated to the candle keep their adepts, one finds some more and more make in plastic and equipped of batteries. The effigies of the characters of animate drawings preferred of the young make competition to the traditional motives (animals and plants, legendary or mythological stages).

It is of tradition to eat a soup of yuanxiao, dessert eponyme of the feast. These are of the wads of dough of rice stuffed (in sweetened majority) firings to the water, whose rounded shape symbolizes the fullness, the united family and the satisfaction of the needs.

To play the riddles that are written on the lanterns is a popular activity. If one found the word of the enigma, one can take back a gift. This activity dates the dynasty of the Song (960-1279). This intellectual game has the favors of the Chinese people of all social layers.

In the day, one organizes artistic representations:  the dance of the lions, the dance of the dragon, the dance of the boat, the dance of yangge, the dance to the tambourines and the walk on stilts. In the evening, one admires in addition to the lanterns of the fires of magnificent artifices. In several cities, the government organizes such fires.

The origin of this feast is complex. It continues a very former tradition that divided the year in three parts (yuan.), the first starting the 15th day of the first month with one feast in honor of the birthday of Tianguandadi, divinity governing the Sky introduced at the time of the Hans by the school of the five bushels of rice. This celebration would have become richer of traditions descended of the imperial court (lanterns, wads).

The legends relating the origin of the feast note the anger of a menacing god to fire the capital the 15th day of the first lunar month. An astute person would have had the idea then to make take all inhabitants that evening in the street with red lanterns, and to hang some at all doors, so that the god, already believing the city in prey in the flames, retires. In the most popular version, the divine threat is a hoax gone up by an imperial adviser to the big c.ur in order to allow a young maid of the palace to leave and to see his family for one evening again. Another history tells that under the dynasty of the Hans (206 J. ave – C. -220), the Buddhism spilled extensively in China. After having learned that the monks had custom the 15 of the 1st lunar month to look at the relics of the bouddha and to light some lamps to honor the gods, the emperor ordered to light this day also in the evening of the lanterns in the imperial palace and the temples to honor them on its turn. Since then, this ritual bouddhique became progressively an imposing popular feast in China.