Lantern Fair
01 · Historical Records
The Lantern Festival is also known as the Festival of Lights. The custom of lighting lanterns at Yuanxiao (the fifteenth night of the first lunar month) originated in the Han dynasty, developed further during the Tang and Song dynasties, and by the Ming and Qing periods lantern fairs across the country had reached their peak.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The lantern fair is a traditional popular festive celebration of the Chinese people. It is widespread throughout the country and is also quite prevalent in overseas Chinese communities. Lantern fairs are mostly held during the Lantern Festival period, though some places hold them on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month; the character of the fairs differs from region to region. According to traditional custom, on the night of the full moon on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, people hang and light colorful lanterns of every kind, while holding celebrations such as viewing, admiring and competing with lanterns, in prayers for family reunion, longevity and abundant harvests. Centered on the lantern fair, localities have developed a series of distinctive Yuanxiao Festival customs, such as guessing lantern riddles, eating yuanxiao (sweet rice dumplings) and walking off the hundred ailments. Over time, Lantern Festival activities have grown ever richer, and in many places traditional folk performances such as dragon lantern dances, lion dances, stilt walking, land-boat dancing and yangge (rice-sprout song) dancing, Taiping drum playing and taige (carried platforms) have been added to the festivities, making the lantern fairs still more lively and exuberant. The Fishing Lantern Festival is a traditional folk festival unique to the coastal fishermen of Yantai City, Shandong Province. It is handed down in a dozen or so fishing villages of the Yantai area, including Shanhou Chujia, Luyang and Bajiao, and has a history of more than five hundred years to this day. At first, the coastal fishermen of Yantai had not fully freed themselves from their dependence on farming culture, and moved the customs of the land onto their boats. With historical change, fishing-family culture developed continuously and the embryo of the Fishing Lantern Festival took shape in the Yantai area; thereafter the festival gradually differentiated itself from the traditional Lantern Festival, becoming a festival exclusive to the fishermen. On the afternoons of the thirteenth and fourteenth of the first lunar month, the coastal fishermen of Yantai set out from their homes carrying sacrificial offerings and holding colored banners high, setting off firecrackers along the way; they first go to the Dragon King Temple or the Temple of the Sea Goddess to present lanterns and worship the deity, then board the fishing boats to sacrifice to the boats and the sea, and finally release the lanterns at the seaside. The Fishing Lantern Festival is a typical representative of the fishing-family culture of the coastal Jiaodong region; it has a distinct fishing-family character and rich cultural content, and in the course of its long development has gradually blended into the life of the fishermen, becoming an indispensable and important component of Jiaodong fishermen's customs.
Procession to the temple
On the afternoon of the thirteenth and fourteenth, fishing families set out with offerings and banners, setting off firecrackers as they carry lanterns to the Dragon King or sea-goddess temple.
Offering at the boat and the sea
At the boat itself the ceremony turns to the vessel and the sea, a stage the land lantern festival does not have, since the object of offering is the boat that will sail the next day.
Setting the lanterns on the sea
The last stage is releasing the lanterns at the shore, timed to the boats coming home, a practice unchanged even as the fishing fleet has been modernised.
The lantern route through the Yantai fishing villages
The festival is kept in a dozen or more Yantai fishing villages, each keeping its own date and crews along a route from temple to boat to shore.
A lantern festival born from a land custom
Fisher families first carried land customs out to their boats; the festival then took a local form and separated from the general Lantern Festival to become one of their own.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Fishing Lantern Festival is a festival unique to the fishing villages of the Yantai coast, handed down in a dozen or so fishing villages including Shanhou Chujia, Luyang and Bajiao; each village holds its own lantern festival, with the dates fixed on the thirteenth and fourteenth of the first lunar month. The route of the fishing lanterns must follow the harbor and the tidal flats: leaving the village they first go to the Dragon King Temple or the Temple of the Sea Goddess, then turn to board the fishing boats to sacrifice to the boats and the sea, and finally release the lanterns at the seaside — the whole way passes through places connected with boats, adding to the inland lantern fairs the extra procedure of approaching the gunwale and boarding the ship. At first the coastal fishermen moved the customs of the land onto their boats unchanged; thereafter the festival differentiated from the Lantern Festival, being set at the time when boats went out to sea, which shows that it had become an independent day for the fishing families within the New Year. The villages do not separately appoint a festival head; the backbone members of the boats going out to sea take charge — which family sails this year and who performs the boat sacrifices are all assigned according to positions on the boat, while the lantern viewers are mostly family members of this and neighboring villages, standing on the tidal flats watching the lanterns go out with the boats.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair · Lantern Fair.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Fishing Lantern Festival is a typical representative of the fishing-family culture of the coastal Jiaodong region. At first it moved the Upper Yuan lantern viewing of the farming society onto the boats unchanged; thereafter, with the development of fishing-family culture, it gradually differentiated into a festival exclusive to the fishermen. This process from transplantation to localization is itself of specimen significance: the form of the festival came from the land, but the season and content of the festival were rearranged by the rhythm of maritime production. The release of lanterns is the item most fully preserved to this day: the time when the lanterns are set into the water coincides with the return of the boats to harbor, and the two events occur in succession along the same stretch of coast; over more than a hundred years the fishing boats have changed their motive power, but the way the lanterns are sent off has not changed. The objects of sacrifice to the boats and the sea have always been the Dragon King and the Sea Goddess, yet the level of belief is closer to daily life: the temple is in the village, the boats at the doorstep, the lanterns on the tidal flat, and the distance between deity and people is compressed by the settlement scale of the fishing village. Conservation practice mostly displays the Fishing Lantern Festival together with old boats and fishing gear, placing the festival and the replaced wooden sailing boats in the same room for comparison; the number of lantern handlers able to coherently demonstrate the whole process from temple sacrifice and boat sacrifice to lantern release is no longer large.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Lin Wenyi 03-1474
- Shao Chuanfu 03-1475
- Kuang Huofa
- Niujunqi
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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