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Chinese Lunar Lantern Festival

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Submitted By yusheng
Words 481
Pages 2
Yusheng Chen #13
Professor Barber
BC 230
October 21, 2015
My Favorite Holiday China is an old country which has five thousands years history, so there are lots of holidays in China. My favorite Chinese holiday is the Lantern Festival. The Lantern Festival is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in lunar calendar. Actually, Lantern Festival is not a real name in its Chinese meaning, because people can not translate that festival’s name correctly due to different culture and language. My favorite festival is the Lantern Festival because there is much fun in the Lantern Festival. In China, we call the Lantern Festival as “Yuan-Xiao Festival”. The reason why Chinese people made this name is that Chinese people have a special calendar called lunar calendar which is based on cycles of lunar phases, and it’s different from the Gregorian calendar which we use now. Thus, the Chinese character “Yuan month” means the first month in lunar calendar, and “Xiao” means the night. So this is what the festival’s name should really be. There are several versions story about the origin of the Lantern Festival, but no one knows which one is true. The most plausible origin states that the Lantern Festival is from Buddhism, and it began from Han dynasty. The emperor Ming of Han dynasty believed Buddhism, and he knew there was some tradition that Buddhists lighted lanterns to show their respect to Buddha’s relics in every fifteenth of lunar January. So the emperor Ming let people light lanterns in the temples and the palace also. Gradually, this tradition spreads up to now. In ancient times, people made some large lanterns to celebrate the Lantern Festival, and that’s why we also called it the Lantern Festival. However, people in modern times discovered more complex processes and designs. For example, children often carry paper lanterns during the night of

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