Lantern Festival, also known as the Shangyuan Festival, the Little First Month, the Yuantian Festival or the Lantern Festival, is one of the traditional Chinese festivals. In southern Fujian, the Lantern Festival is also known as the "Little New Year's Dog". There were descriptio

Watch the lanterns together Yan Jie Photo

In fact, people in some southern Fujian started preparing for the Lantern Festival lanterns as early as , on the 14th day of the first lunar month. People will erect Aoshan lantern sheds in open places such as parks and streets, and several companies will tie a coloring shed together. After binding, the lights of each house are gathered together to become a scenic spot. This is the commonly known saying of "Fourteen Lantern Sheds".

On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, people from all over southern Fujian will take to the streets to enjoy lanterns and watch performances. Among them, the most local characteristics of southern Fujian are the "streeting on the street" performances in various places.

Quanzhou 's "streeting on the street" has unique foreign characteristics. The "street" team will dress up the tents around art gallery like nomadic peoples, while the actors will dress up as singers, holding drums, and dancing on the left and right sides of the art gallery. Taichung has a throne, with antelope, rhinoceros horn, sandalwood , ambergris and other products from overseas. The bands in the audience play exotic music. This is because in during the Song and Yuan dynasties, Jubao Street and Wanshou Road Fumei Wharf outside Deji Gate in Quanzhou were distribution centers for import and export goods. At that time, foreign businessmen who came from afar would first use the "foreign goods" they brought to worship Mazu , praying for the ship to be safe and safe, and then use it for trading. Later, the display of this "elephant" evolved into a folk performance, called "welcome (promotion) elephant".

In the water town of southern Fujian, citizens stroll under Lanterns . Photo by Yan Jie

The dragon lantern parade in Anxi Longjuan in Quanzhou is also unique. In addition to the dragon head and the dragon tail, the lantern in the middle is made of various forms of ancient lanterns made by each household. The whole village is one dragon. The longer the dragon body, the more prosperous the people are. Some dragon lanterns are also coated with pine oil , so that the lanterns are not afraid of water, and they can still parade outdoors when they are rainy.

Zhangzhou The most unique "streeting on the street" performances are "Welcome the Pavilion", "Roasting the Golden Date" and "Big Drum Cool Umbrella". There is also a "dance bird" in Zhao'an, Zhangzhou. It is a model of a big bird that is made of bamboo strips and covered with white cloth and colored paper. People put it inside to perform bird dance, which is called "Bird Blowing Boy".

Xiamen 's "streeting on the street" performance is also very lively. Girls and children in costume dance jubilant and enthusiastic lantern dances, the stilt team held a spectacular performance, and the actors of the South Orchestra will also sing Nanyin ancient music live.

guessing riddles

Since the Song Dynasty, scholars often "wrote poems with silk lanterns on the night of the Lantern Festival, and sometimes express ridicule, and paint characters, hide hidden words, and old Beijing rhetoric, tease pedestrians." In ancient times, people would stick riddles on various lanterns to attract pedestrians to guess, which led to the "lantern riddle". , Shishi City, , in southern Fujian and , Xiangcheng District, Zhangzhou, were both rated as "China's Riddle Hometown".

The old custom of guessing riddles in southern Fujian is much more complicated. You must number the small colored paper with riddles and post it on the curtain on the stage (or temporary stage) in advance. The host has a gong and a drum next to him behind the curtain.The audience in the audience thought that they would read out the number of the item loudly when they guessed one. The host beats the drum and the guesser outside then reads the content of the item. Each time the host beats the drum, he responds. Finally, the guesser tells the answer. If the guess is right, the host beats the drum twice and hits the gong. The assistant standing outside the curtain will tear off the guessed note and throw it to the guesser together with the prize, and some will set off firecrackers to congratulate him. The audience will also cheer and cheer.

If you don't guess well, the host will hit the drum wall with a drumstick. The guesser can give up, or you can re-speak a riddle, or stick to your guess and say the reason for persistence. If the host thinks what the guesser said is reasonable, even if it does not match the original answer, he can also beat the drum gong to express his approval. Although there was no meeting between the inside and outside the court, they communicated with each other through the sound of gongs and drums, and the atmosphere was warm and interesting.

The current riddle guessing program has been simplified a lot. People just need to remove the riddle guessing and inform the managers of their answers.

Eat Yuanxiao

Yuanxiao Round is a must-have traditional food for Minnan people . Because the eating habits in southern Fujian are slightly different, the way to make Yuanxiao Round is different in different places.

Quanzhou's Lantern Festival Round is made with fried peanuts removed and mashed, then add sugar, sesame, winter melon sugar crushed and kumquat puree, and then mix with cooked lard and spices fried with green onion to make pill filling. Wet the pill filling and put it in a plate filled with glutinous rice flour, and let it roll repeatedly on the plate to make the glutinous rice flour evenly stick to the pill filling to form glutinous rice balls . Then boil in boiling water until the glutinous rice is cooked and floats onto the water surface, which tastes sweet but not greasy. Quanzhou people will use Lantern Festival as their family’s breakfast that day, which means a happy and auspicious year. If relatives and friends come to visit around the Lantern Festival, they often treat guests with Lantern Festival.

The Lantern Festival rounds in Zhangzhou are mostly sweet, with black sesame , peanuts or red dates, and there are no stuffings. Cook brown sugar water , clean water or fermented glutinous rice.

Xiamen’s dumplings are all filled with flavors, including sweet and salty, some without filling, and some with filling, such as assorted, bean paste, date paste, bamboo shoots, lard, etc.

In addition, people in Fujian and Taiwan attach more importance to the "food night" on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month than the "food luck" on the eleventh day of the first lunar month. On that day, the two towns and coastal areas will eat , fried oysters and cooked with potato flour. The common saying goes, "Oysters sprinkle noodle thread, good people come to stumble (dating), oysters and noodle thread, good people come to stumble, good people come to stumble," hoping to get good luck in the New Year and have noble people help.

, and Hakka in Miaoli area, Taiwan, is made of vegetable buns, made of glutinous rice, and is filled with shredded radish, green onion, mushrooms, shrimps, minced meat and other stuffings. Pinch a ridge on the surface and steam it. It looks like a bamboo pig cage , so it is called "pig cage bin". Also, because the rice cake is made of glutinous rice balls with crushed mugwort, it is also called "Caozi rice cake".

begging for tortoise

In southern Fujian, people go to "beg for tortoise" in various temples, not only to "begging for children", but also to pray for "food peace".

The "turtles" used as offerings in various places have various shapes and materials. There are "sugar turtles" made with models, including "rice cake turtles" and "fragrant turtles", "lime turtles" printed after being molded, "kang turtles" and " red turtles cake " printed after being molded, and "cake turtles", "money turtles", "rice flour turtles", "rice turtles", "rice bun turtles", "orange turtles", "golden turtles", "candy turtles", "peanut candy turtles", etc. Because the rule that those who seek turtles will pay back twice the price next year, the "turtles" in the temple will increase their weight every year, and become bigger and bigger, often weigh thousands of pounds. Later, when the turtle is too large, the temple will take back the parts and make it into a small turtle, and then send it to the believers to beg for it.

In Xiamen, starting from the 14th day of the first lunar month, various temples and palaces light candles and huge incense. On the table table are red rice turtles, rice cake turtles, and glutinous rice flour special dragon-headed turtles, some turtles are also decorated with paper-made Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea and other legendary figures.People beg for turtles to live a long life and make money after a lifetime, and continue until the 16th day, so those who cannot ask for turtles can come and ask for them again the next day.

-day harem rice turtle allowed believers to come forward to touch it to share good luck. There is a local proverb: "Touch the glans and start building, touch the turtle's beak to be rich, touch the turtle's body and turn over, touch the turtle's body and eat it endlessly, touch the turtle's tail until it has a head and a tail."

In Quanzhou, if the person who seeks turtle does not have the turtle to repay the turtle in the coming year, the temple blessing will be cut into a turtle shape with red paper, write the name of the turtle seeker and then paste it on the wall in the temple. However, if a funeral occurs at the home of the person who seeks the turtle, the promised wish to return the turtle can be postponed.

Sacrifice and pray for blessings

On the Lantern Festival, the southern Fujian people who are full of fear of God will worship on this day to pray for peace and smoothness in the new year.

is in Quanzhou, and the Sanguan Temple of Jinxian is located in the northwest corner of the city. It is remote and difficult to walk on the road. However, the devout people still support the elderly and young, bringing various offerings, and come to the temple early to burn incense and paper money to worship.

in Zhangzhou, people will get up to worship Tianguan Emperor . Because Tianguan Emperor is as noble as Tiangong, the offerings worshipped are the same, but the Lantern Festival dumplings are added. The ceremony is the same. You must worship in front of the main hall, and you must also burn big longevity gold and set off firecrackers.

The King of Galan in the Dragon Sea Jiuhu Forest in Zhangzhou is also a very distinctive festival. On the morning of the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the villagers gathered at the Kalan King Temple on the side of the Cilin Stream in front of the village to worship, and invited the statue of Kalan King into the sedan chair and carried it around the village for a week. Then the carriage carryer will jump into the selected pond with the person and the sedan chair, soak the God of Galan and place it in the pond.

Xie Yipeng Photo

At noon that day, members of the board of directors carried the statue of the god from the pond back to the King of Galan Temple, and the elders in the village took the lead in burning incense and worshiping. Then I asked to get into the divine sedan chair again, led by the ancestor, ran away with the statue of the god and jumped into the stream beside the village to swim to the other side. The villagers went into the water to swim towards the sedan chair, splashed water at the statue, protecting the statue to reach the other side. As soon as the divine sedan got ashore, the villagers who were already waiting on the other side took over the statue of the god, carried the divine sedan and ran back and forth along the river bank, and then jumped back to the stream. The statue of the god enters the water several times before it is carried back to the temple by the villagers. The villagers believe that this can wash away the bad luck of the past year and ensure good luck and blessings for the coming year.

Zhangzhou Cultural Tourism New Media Matrix

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Source: Fujian Minnan Cultural Research Association

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