CHAPTER IV
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS
The Feast of Lanterns comes almost directly after that of the New Year. It may almost be said that one is the complement of the other, as the latter in date takes place from the tenth day to the fifteenth day of the first moon, and as the holidays of the New Year are prolonged from the twentieth day of the twelfth moon of the dying year to the twentieth day of the first moon of the new year.
During this month of holiday, all official business is suspended. The seals which represent the official signatures are locked up in their cases.
It is the use made, in incredible quantities, of all sorts of lanterns that gives its name and its originality to this feast. The Chinese are very fond of making these lanterns, and give them a luxury of form, and employ in their manufacture a variety of material which defy imagination. There is not on that day a single nook of the mighty Empire which is not thus lighted up. To carry out an illumination on such a scale, it will be readily understood that something more is needed than is seen elsewhere when lanterns are used for illuminations.
To get a more exact idea of the character of our illuminations, imagine one of your large toy-shops filled with transparent lanterns—horses, lions, sheep, elephants, soldiers, horsemen, parasols, flowers, grotesque figures, fantastic animals, &c. All the imitations of living things are associated with all the varieties of fancy to transform light silk or translucid paper into multi-coloured lanterns, now simple, now double. These latter turn round and round, driven by the motion of the heated air, and display the series of pictures with which they are filled. There is not a thing in nature, or out of it, that does not on that day take shape of lantern.
A gigantic lantern representing a dragon is carried about in the public places to the sound of music. This is composed of a framework of wicker covered with transparent stuff, on which the dragon’s scales are painted. It is mounted on staves, which are held by the bearers. Anybody can get the procession to stop before his house, or he can have it enter his courtyard if he wants a private representation. In this case, all he has to do is to let off a certain number of crackers as the procession passes his house, so as to let the bearers know that they have to stop. After the performance, which consists in making the dragon fly about in every direction, cake and wine are offered to the musicians and to the bearers, but never money, for the procession is always composed of people belonging to the highest classes of society, who do this for their pleasure. The European torchlight procession gives but a very feeble idea of our dragon walk.
When a marriage takes place in a family, the relations of the bride send her on her wedding-day a lantern representing a divinity holding a child in his hand. If in the second year the wife has not had a child, another lantern is sent her representing an orange; the word orange in Chinese is synonymous to the words “make haste.” The lantern thus constitutes a kind of punning reminder to her of her duty. Lanterns are also sent from the local temples to any house in the parish in which either a recent marriage, or a birth, or a literary success has taken place.