The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is an important Chinese traditional festival. The Lantern Festival, or Yuan Xiao festival, traditionally marks the end of the Spring Festival celebrations. After this day, Chinese will resume their normal daily lives.
The Lantern Festival marks the first full moon of the new year. People usually celebrate by hanging colorful lanterns with puzzles inside for people to solve. Yuan Xiao, which is also called Tang Yuan or white glutinous rice balls, is the traditional food for the day.
The tradition originated with a legend of gods and beasts. Once upon a time, there were many evil beasts in the world. They ate people and animals, so the people organized a group to hunt the beasts. However, one day the people accidentally killed a holy bird that had lost its way. The God of Heaven was very angry, and he ordered all of the creatures in the world burned to death on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. His daughter, a kind fairy, heard the news and told it to the people down on Earth. The frightened people hurriedly met to devise a solution. A wise old man told everyone to hang lanterns in their yards and set off firecrackers on the fifteenth day. When the god saw the fire in the world, he would think that all of the people had been burned to death.
The idea worked and from then on, people have hung lanterns each year to mark the day.
The Lantern Festival is also regarded as the Chinese Valentine's Day. In feudalistic China, the festival celebration provided the unmarried young people with a chance to meet each other since at that time, young girls were not allowed to leave their homes freely. But when the Lantern Festival came, they could go out to appreciate the beautiful lanterns with their friends, and giving them a chance to look for their future husbands personally.
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