How to celebrate the Lantern Festival in the Song Dynasty The Lantern Festival in the Northern Song Dynasty is more lively than the Spring Festival.
The custom of putting lights on the Lantern Festival prevailed in Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty. The lighting time in the Tang Dynasty was three days (14th to 16th of the first month). After Song Zhao Guo Li, Song Taizu wrote in the first month of the fifth year of Gande: "Go to the Yuan Dynasty and stop the lights for three nights. This court has nothing to do, and the jurisdiction is peaceful. In those days, the valley was rich, so you should enjoy the pleasure of literati. It made Kaifeng House light up with seventeen or eighteen night lights. Take the latter as an example. " Extend the Lantern Festival lighting time to five days. During the Chunyou period of the Southern Song Dynasty, it was increased to six nights, and the lights were put on the thirteenth day of the first month.
The festive atmosphere of the Lantern Festival has been brewing for a long time. Just after the solstice of winter, on the Imperial Street in front of Bianjing Xuande, Kaifeng House has already set up a shed with bamboo and wood to put lights on, decorated with flowers, colorful flags, brocade and silks, and covered with cloth paintings. "Everyone paints fairy stories, or people who sell medicine and divination in the market." This shed is called "mountain shed"
Since the year before last, every day, various artists have performed various entertainment programs in the two corridors of Bianjing Royal Street: magic, acrobatics, rap, song and dance, zaju, cuju, monkey show and lantern riddles, which can be described as "surprise gift". As the Lantern Festival approaches, there are two colorful statues of Manjusri Bodhisattva and Samantabhadra around the Yujie Mountain shed, spanning the lion and the white elephant, spraying five streams of water from the fingers of the bodhisattva-it can be said that it is an ancient artificial fountain device.
From the mountain shed to Xuande Gate in the imperial city, there is a big square surrounded by thorns by the government, which is more than 100 feet long and is called "Spine Basin". A music shed was built in the spinal basin, where artists in the teaching workshop played music and hundreds of plays. Tourists stood outside the thorns to watch.
At the beginning of the Hua Deng, the mountain shed was brightly lit. "Gold and jade set each other off, splendid and brilliant." Above stood a graceful geisha beauty, whose dress fluttered in the wind, just like a fairy descending to earth. The mountain shed is also equipped with an artificial waterfall-the water is twisted to the top of the mountain shed by a winch and put into a huge wooden cabinet, and then the water outlet of the wooden cabinet is opened regularly to let the water flow down, forming a spectacular waterfall, which is very beautiful under the light.
The two towers of Xuande Gate Tower "each hung a Yi Deng ball, about the length of Fiona Fang, and lit candles". "The drugstore seats, tea houses and wineries in Zhufang Lane, Maxiang Lane have their own novelty", "There are lamp balls, lanterns, silk lanterns, moon lanterns, poem silk lanterns, mirror lanterns, word lanterns, riding lanterns, phoenix lanterns, water lanterns, glass lanterns and shadow lanterns", and there are so many lamps that people can't see them all.