The origin and customs of Lantern Festival

2021/05/10




In China, we can't live without Chinese, and learning Chinese is inseparable from its historical development and tradition. Today we are going to learn about the Lantern Festival in China.

The Lantern Festival falls on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, a traditional festival that Chinese people attach great importance to. The Lantern Festival is also called "Shangyuan Festival", the Spring Lantern Festival, is a festival for many families to get together. The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the night of the first full moon of the year. With the custom of eating yuanxiao(sweet dumplings), this festival is firmly associated with the word “reunion”. The Lantern Festival is the first important festival after the Spring Festival. Both the south and the north in China pay more attention to this festival and hold many activities to celebrate it.

Since the middle of the Tang Dynasty, the Lantern Festival has developed into a national carnival in China. Therefore, the Lantern Festival is the most thorough and typical traditional festival that embodies the traditional festival customs.

In most places, the customs of the Lantern Festival include eating yuanxiao, watching lanterns, guessing lantern riddles, beating drums, performing dragon and lion dances, etc. However, the customs of the North and South also have their own unique features.

Eating Tangyuan(glutinous rice balls or called sweet dumplings) is an important custom during the Lantern Festival. Today, the north is called yuanxiao and the south is called tangyuan.

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UNWTO is the world's most influential intergovernmental international tourism organization, with 159 member countries and its headquarters in Madrid, Spain as its depository country. China joined the organization in 1983.

In November 2007, at the 17th Session of the UNWTO General Assembly, China proposed to make Chinese the official language of the Organization. The General Assembly adopted China's proposal and adopted an amendment to Article 38 of the Constitution of the World Tourism Organization, which reads: "The official languages of the Organization shall be Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

According to the constitution of UNWTO, after the amendment is approved by the meeting, more than two-thirds of the member states must go through the ratification procedure before it can enter into force. Since the adoption of the Amendment in 2007, China has done a lot of work with the UNWTO to promote the ratification of the Amendment by all member states as soon as possible and to make Chinese the official language of the UNWTO enter into force at an early date. In January 2021, the number of countries that have ratified the Amendment has reached 106, which is in line with the legal number, and the Amendment has officially come into force.

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