Lantern Festival (Hequ Lantern Festival)

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

Applicant: Hequ County, Shanxi Province

Item No.: 988

Project No.: Ⅹ - 81

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: folk customs

Region: Shanxi Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Hequ County, Shanxi Province

Protected by: Errentai art research center of Hequ County

Brief introduction of Hequ River Lantern Festival:

Applicant: Hequ County, Shanxi 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.

Hequ Lantern Festival is a kind of grand folk festival activity in the border area of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, which spread in Hequ County of Shanxi Province. Every year on the 15th of July of the lunar calendar, people from the three provinces on both sides of the Yellow River rush to Hequ to join in the Lantern Festival. At the beginning of the activity, a grand ceremony was held to commemorate Dayu, and then monks chanted sutras. The people at the meeting put the river lanterns in front of the shrine to pray for the blessing of Dayu. In the evening, river transport organizations such as Helu society, ferry society and tanchuan Society held large-scale activities to release river lanterns to mourn the dead and pray for peace. The whole activity lasted for three days. Every night, in addition to the river lanterns, there was entertainment.

Hequ Lantern Festival has entered the collective memory of the people in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, and has become an important part of traditional customs in Hequ area, which has research value in sociology, folklore and local history and culture.

Chinese PinYin : Deng Hui He Qu He Deng Hui