Spotlight: Chinese people celebrate Lantern Festival worldwide

With great verve and passion, Chinese people around the world have celebrated their Lantern Festival in both traditional and trendy ways.

The festival, which fell on Feb. 22 this year, brought an end to this year's Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations. It is the day when people see themselves starting a new life in a new year.

In China, Lantern Festival is an important family day, but unlike Spring Festival when people stay home for family dinners, it is a day for going out and about.

TRADITIONAL WAYS OF CELEBRATIONS

In southwest China's Sichuan Province, 20 dragon dance troupes gathered in Luxian County. A team of dancers under a long dragon "costume" painted red or gold used poles to manipulate the dragon's head and serpentine "body." They danced to the accompaniment of drums, twisting the dragon as it "danced," shaking its head and swinging its tail through the crowds.

Another folk dance, "Yangge," was performed on Monday morning in Yan'an city, the "red cradle" of the Chinese revolution in northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Staging the dance on Lantern Festival has become a tradition in the city. This year, about 3,000 performers in bright costumes with colorful umbrellas, fans and red ribbons danced to local folk music and drums.

INNOVATED WAYS OF CELEBRATIONS

The Lantern Festival dates back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - 24 AD). Lanterns are almost always red, the color of good fortune in China. But today people are using new techniques to decorate their lanterns, adding fashionable new elements to an old tradition.

In Taiwan, the annual lantern exhibition has as its centerpiece a 26-meter figure of the Monkey King, the leading character in the Chinese classic "Journey to the West," to celebrate the Year of the Monkey in the Chinese zodiac.

In Shanghai, the Yu Garden Fair not only presents traditional lanterns but also the latest high-tech lighting. With a monkey theme, the lantern fair features lasers and pop music. Though these modern shows attract huge numbers of people, some are keen to preserve more traditional celebrations.

CHINESE HELMETS MISS HOME ON LANTERN FESTIVAL

To most Chinese, Lantern Festival is a moment for family reunion, not for some Chinese peacekeepers who are still active on UN missions in places far away from their home and families.

Zhang Hongjun, a Chinese peacekeeper in Lebanon, is from China's southwestern mega city of Chongqing. For him and his teammates, homesickness is inevitable.

He told Xinhua that because of their pressing time schedule, he had to keep working and could not celebrate the festival with his family back home this year.

Zhang's team is now tasked to reinforce outer-fences for the camps of Ghanaian peacekeepers. To ensure that all team members can have Yuanxiao, a traditional Chinese snack for the festival, Sun Zhi, the team leader, had made good preparations.

Peng Shoucong, another Chinese peacekeeper, told Xinhua that it is his fifth time to come to Lebanon for UN peacekeeping mission, and the third time for him to spend the Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival in the country.

When he was to leave home for the mission, his daughter clinched his legs and would not let him go. He said he misses his family very much.

LATERN FESTIVAL CELEBRATED OVERSEAS

Grand Lantern Festival celebrations are deeply rooted in China's history, traditions and customs for thousands of years. To date, the time-honored festival has evolved into a globalized cultural feast beyond borders.

Thousands of miles away from China, Chinese opera artists from Chongqing made debuts Monday evening of classic Sichuan Opera and celebrated the Lantern Festival at the northernmost art center in Scotland's Lerwick.

Young performers performed several classic episodes of Sichuan Opera at Mareel, the most northerly music, cinema and creative industries center in Britain on Monday evening.

Performers first exhibited some highlights of the 300-year-old Sichuan Opera, one of the oldest local operas in China, including the five types of characters and various kinds of performing techniques, costumes and music.

They entertained the audience with their wonderful performance and humoristic facial expressions and words, and won warm applause and cheering.

In central Auckland of New Zealand, the annual Auckland Lantern Festival presents 800 lanterns on a showground, attracting a large number of visitors.

The Lantern Festival, moved from city center to a nearby spacious park for the first time in 16 years, includes the focus figure of monkey as China entered the Year of the Monkey on Feb. 8.

"It brings a new dimension to this cultural venue, strengthens the notion that celebrating the Chinese New Year has become a very important part of New Zealand calendar," Chinese Ambassador Wang Lutong said.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown called on all Auckland people to show up at the event.

The festival organizers set up a 100-meter-long arcade for Asian food vendors, making it one of the busiest spots in the venue.

Lantern Festival has become one of the most popular gatherings in Auckland with over 170,000 people turning up for one weekend last year, showcasing a multicultural fusion in a city with 25 percent of its population being of Asian origin.

Not just a symbolic mark in the Chinese calendar, the festival also demonstrates the essence of ancient Chinese civilization and the long-cherished family values held not only by the Chinese people, but also by people all over the world. Endi