◎Sun Jun

　　The Lantern Festival is one of the traditional Chinese festivals, also known as Shangyuan Festival, Yuanxi or Lantern Festival, with a very long history.

　　In ancient times, the most solemn activity during the Lantern Festival was undoubtedly the lantern viewing.

According to Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Dream Hualu" in the Song Dynasty, on the 15th day of the first lunar month: "The lanterns are colorful, golden and green, and splendid and splendid." People used lights to decorate the night of the Lantern Festival beautifully.

Xin Qiji wrote in "Qingyu Case Yuanxi": "Dongfeng night puts flowers and thousands of trees. It blows down and stars like rain. BMW carves are full of fragrance." The colorful and lively scene of the Lantern Festival is rendered to the extreme. It can be seen the prosperity of the Lantern Festival in the Song Dynasty.

　　The poet Lu You, who was contemporary with Xin Qiji, also recorded a story about the Lantern Festival lights in "Notes of Lao Xue'an": a certain county governor named "Tian Deng" took office. Lantern celebration.

However, "lamp" and "deng" have the same pronunciation, and the subordinates were afraid of offending the county governor, so they changed the word "lamp" on the notice to the word "fire", so the notice read "the state set fire for three days according to the rules".

This is the origin of "only state officials are allowed to set fires, and people are not allowed to light lamps".

　　In addition, the ancients believed that viewing lanterns during the Lantern Festival was a custom at home and abroad. Wu Chengen described the Lantern Festival in Chapter 91 of the novel "Journey to the West".

It is said that the Tang monk and his apprentice passed through the Jinping Mansion under the jurisdiction of Tianzhu Kingdom, just as the Lantern Festival was approaching, the Jinping Mansion, which is located in an exotic area, was also decorated with lanterns and lively: "The lanterns hang in the busy city, and the song of Taiping is sung together. See also the six streets and three cities. The lights are on..." Finally, he also mentioned: "The lights are bright and the moon is bright on the Lantern Festival night, and the rain will be good for a long time."

　　When viewing the lanterns during the Lantern Festival, the lantern couplet cannot be bypassed, and there are many interesting stories left in the lantern couplet.

According to legend, Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty went out to watch the lanterns during the Lantern Festival in a certain year, and suddenly a couplet appeared: "The lantern is bright and the moon is bright, the lantern and the moon are bright, and the Ming Dynasty is unified." As a result, a country scholar said: "The king is happy with the people, the king and the people are the same. Le, Yongle for ten thousand years." However, this story is just a folklore.

　　With lanterns, lantern riddles are naturally indispensable.

Lantern riddles are riddles posted on lanterns for tourists to guess. By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, guessing lantern riddles during the Lantern Festival had become a custom.

Gu Lu, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, recorded the scene of guessing lantern riddles during the Lantern Festival in Suzhou that year in "Qing Jialu". Those who guessed correctly also received prizes such as towel fans and sachets.

The Lantern Festival in the 22nd episode of "A Dream of Red Mansions" coincides with Xue Baochai's birthday. Jia's house held a banquet to celebrate, and then opened a special Lantern Festival.

　　The Lantern Festival is also inseparable from love.

Meng Di of the Tang Dynasty recounted a story in "Poems of Ability", which is that Princess Lechang of Chen in the Southern Dynasty married Xu Deyan as his wife. He and Princess Lechang agreed to go to the street to sell the half of the bronze mirror on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month after they separated, as a proof of their meeting.

Later, Xu Deyan really reunited with Princess Lechang.

　　Li Qingzhao, the lyricist, recalled the days in Bianjing when he was young in "Yong Yule·Sunset Melting Gold" in his later years: "Zhongzhou has a prosperous day, and there are many leisure time in the boudoir, and I remember three or five. Ji Chu." It means that the women in the boudoir preferred the 15th day of the first lunar month, because that day, the girls could wear delicate hats, twist carefully crafted golden snow willows, and dress up beautifully to go to the street to watch the lights.

　　The Northern Song Dynasty writer Ouyang Xiu's "Sheng Chazi Yuanxi" is a lyrical masterpiece of the Lantern Festival: "Last year, on the night of the Lantern Festival, the lights of the flower market were like day. I don’t see the people of last year, and tears wet the sleeves of spring shirts.” As one of the most poetic and romantic festivals in the Chinese nation, the Lantern Festival is so wonderful that Tang Yin, a talented scholar of the Ming Dynasty, sighed in his poem “Lantern Festival”: “Don’t show your respect. Open your mouth and laugh, how do you get rid of this good time?"