Chinese people celebrate Lantern Festival with traditional customs, symbolic dumplings

People across China celebrated the Lantern Festival with traditional customs and symbolic dumplings on Sunday, which is habitually seen as the conclusion of the Spring Festival celebrations and a festive occasion to pray for yearly good harvest.

With a history of over 2,000 years, the Lantern Festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the first month on the Chinese lunar calendar, which falls on Sunday this year.

Making bean flour lanterns for the Lantern Festival is a centuries-old custom in the Jiaodong region of Shandong province. The lanterns are made of bean flours in the shapes of a variety of animals. People usually light them at home on the night of the festival to wish for a prosperous year and pray for good luck.

In Shandong's Laixi City, Chi Jinyan, the intangible cultural inheritor of "Jiaodong Bobo" (a kind of flower-shaped steamed bun), organized an activity to teach kids to make bean flour lanterns as the arrival of the traditional festival.

"Lighting the bean flour lanterns and praying for auspiciousness and peace carry the best wishes of we Jiaodong people," Chi said.

In Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province, some time-honored sweet shops have seen long queues waiting for buying Yuanxiao, a kind of glutinous rice balls with different fillings that is the most representative food for Lantern Festival in northern regions.

With the surging demand as the grand festival approaches, the skilled Yuanxiao makers recently start working at 5:00. They cut solid fillings into small pieces, dipped them in water and then rolled them in a flat basket containing dry glutinous rice flour. The step is repeated until the wrapper is thick enough and the ball grows into a big and round shape –- that is Yuanxiao.

Boiled in water and served in a thick broth, the sweet and soft Yuanxiao is symbolic for reunion, peace, health, and happiness in Chinese culture.

"I bought some Yuanxiao and will give them to my friends and relatives. Being together with families, I feel the festival is of great joyous atmosphere," said Wang Yu, a local resident.