Lantern Festival

The next festival after the spring festival is Lantern Festival, also called Yuan Xiao Jie and Deng Jie in Chinese. It is celebrated on January 15 of the lunar calendar. According to the history and legend, this festival derives from the Han dynasty. Ancient people would light lanterns and fireworks to appeal for mercy and make dumplings with glutinous rice flour to serve the fairies. They did so to avoid the disaster from the Jade Emperor (a supernatural being in Chinese folklore ) who planned to set the whole world on fire. From then on, people formed this ritual and added more interesting activities into it, such as puzzle and riddle games, stilt-walking, Lion Dances, Dragon Dances and prayer boats. This festival has been passing down because of its interesting activities. Nowadays, Yangshuo people have developed a new festival named Fishing Lights Festival which combines the traditional culture and new customs in Yangshuo very similar to Lantern Festival, but is held on the river, not on land. After putting candles into paper boats, people burn the candles and let them float along the water in the Li River. At the same time, the fishing boats with lanterns sail leisurely which forms a fantastic sight. So some people in Yangshuo treat the Fishing Lights Festival as the new Lantern Festival (Deng Jie).