The fifteenth of January on the Lunar calendar is Chinese Lantern Festival. It's an extended celebration of Chinese New Year. (It's on February 23, 2013, but while I am writing this article, it has passed the mid night in Asia. It's still Lantern Festival here though to the Chinese people here.)
We eat round dumplings, called Yuan Xiao, which are made with sticky rice. They can be sweet and can be salty. The size of Yuan Xiao is like a golf ball. We usually fill ground peanuts, sesame paste or cooked sweetened red beans inside of Yuan Xiao.
You can also make Yuan Xiao like traditional Chinese soup. We then fill meat inside and add vegetables in the soup.
Another activity we do on Lantern Festival is going to a Lantern Fair. There are always wonderful lantern fairs at city halls, citizen squares or parks in different cities. They usually exhibit beautiful and delicate lanterns with the specific theme: the animal of the year. Young kids will also carry their own handmade lantern to the fair. Lantern riddles is also a game we play on that day. The questions are written on the lanterns and we pick one to answer. The answers are mainly about Chinese words, idioms or names of places. To answer the questions, you have to pay attention to the hidden clues in the questions.
Sky Lantern
A sky lantern is made of wooden frames and thin paper. We write wishes on it with brush pens and light up the 金纸 /jīn zhǐ /(golden paper) inside it to make hot air fill the lantern so it rises to the sky.
There are different versions of Yuan Xiao Stories, but mainly it's about families getting together. Here are two similar versions of stories, one is Chinese only and the other one has Chinese and English subtitles.
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