元宵 Lantern Festival

Monday was the fifteenth day since the Chinese New Year began. It is the day where the first full moon of the year should be visible in the sky. Also, it marks the end of the holiday season. It is the last night to hear, see, and feel the Chinese New Year festive atmosphere.

In Suzhou, the New Year celebration closes with the Lantern Festival at the Pan Men Gate. The festival includes games, food, fireworks, and many other activities. On our way to the festival we would see many people preparing to send out their flying lanterns into the sky with all their New Year wishes. They would light up the lantern and let it float away into the sky. Many hundreds of lanterns would fill the night sky.

Also, fireworks would bring a constant buzz from all over the city. Everyone was celebrating the full moon. Fireworks were literally over my head and such an impressive site.

One of the things that makes the Lantern Festival such a special event are the thousands of people who go to the festival. There is literally a sea of people, as the Chinese would say, 人山人海! The most interesting thing of the night is crossing the bridge to the festival. It is one tiny bridge that fills up with so many people that one is helpless to move and completely at the mercy of what the crowd will do. My son describes the feeling of being in this crowd as being squeezed by an anaconda. This helpless feeling I think is pretty much what a foreigner would feel. I felt that the locals were pretty much accustomed to these type of crowds although many of the locals I know do not like to go to the festival because of all the people.

Once you reached the other side, there are many carnival games being played. These would include games with darts and balls to win a lucky prize. Also, there was local food including the special foods for the festival. The special food to eat this day are small little dumplings balls called 元宵. Below are some pictures of local foods served at the festival.

This festival can not be called the Lantern Festival without the presence of lanterns. All over the festival grounds one can see many different type of lanterns. They are all very beautiful and decorate the festival grounds. Historically, these lanterns should have a puzzle on them and the family would get together try to solve the puzzles and eat 元宵.