Lantern Festival (Shicheng Lantern Festival)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Lantern Festival (Shicheng Lantern Festival)

Applicant: Shicheng County, Jiangxi Province

Item No.: 988

Project No.: Ⅹ - 81

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: folk customs

Region: Jiangxi Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Shicheng County, Jiangxi Province

Protected by: cultural center of Shicheng County, Jiangxi Province

Brief introduction of the Lantern Festival (Shicheng Lantern Festival)

Applicant: Shicheng County, Jiangxi Province

Lantern Festival is a traditional mass festival in China. It is popular all over the country and in overseas Chinese communities. Lantern Festival often occurs during the Lantern Festival, and some places hold Lantern Festival on the 15th of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. The characteristics of Lantern Festival are different in different regions.

"Lantern Festival" is also known as "Lantern Festival". The custom of lighting lantern festival began in Han Dynasty, further developed in Tang and Song Dynasties, and reached its peak in Ming and Qing Dynasties. According to the traditional custom, on the night of the full moon on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, people should hang and light all kinds of colored lights, and hold lantern watching, lantern watching, lantern racing and other celebration activities to pray for family reunion and longevity. Taking the Lantern Festival as the center, a series of distinctive Lantern Festival customs, such as guessing lantern riddles, eating Lantern Festival and walking through all kinds of diseases, have been formed all over the country.

With the passage of time, lantern festival activities become more and more abundant. In many places, traditional folk performances such as playing dragon lantern, playing lion, walking on stilts, rowing dry boat, twisting Yangko, playing Taiping drum and raising pavilion are added to Lantern Festival, which makes Lantern Festival more prosperous.

Shicheng Lantern Festival is a unique folk custom, which is mainly distributed in Shicheng County, southern Jiangxi Province. In Shicheng dialect of Jiangxi Province, "Deng" and "Ding" are homonymous. Therefore, dancing lantern means wishing people prosperity and family auspiciousness. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, lantern dance activities in the Spring Festival were already popular in Shicheng. As soon as the lunar month came, some literary and art lovers in the countryside spontaneously organized to make various kinds of Lantern colors. They toured the village together at the beginning of the first month and danced with each other until the Lantern Festival "Xie Deng".

The props, dance and music of the Shicheng Lantern Festival are very beautiful. The lantern colors include dragon lantern, lion lantern, horse lantern, snake lantern, basket lantern, umbrella lantern, brand lantern, carp lantern, arhat lantern, clam shell lantern, boat lantern, Babao lantern, Banqiao lantern, Qilin lantern and so on. They are all made of colored paper and bamboo strips by weaving, binding, painting, cutting, pasting and other means The performance is bold and unconstrained, and the performance of vegetable basket lamp is light, lively, pungent, humorous, vivid and flexible; the accompaniment music is mostly the folk percussion music unique to Shicheng, and the melody is mostly the local songs of Shicheng and the melody of Gannan Tea Picking Opera, with bright and melodious rhythm.

The Shicheng Lantern Festival is deeply rooted among the people and has distinctive local characteristics. Its lantern production, dance performance and music creation fully show the cultural and artistic creativity of the Hakka ancestors, reflecting the profound Hakka culture of Shicheng from one aspect.