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. The Pancun lantern fair originated in the Ming dynasty, when officialdom was corrupt, society was dark, bandits ran rampant and the people had no means of living. Qi Jianzhai, the thirteenth-generation ancestor of the Kuang family of Pancun, went to visit the famed scholar Chen Baisha (1428-1500), who had once taught in Pancun, to ask how to avert disaster and escape misfortune.
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 Pancun lantern fair is handed down in Pancun Township, Shuikou Town, Kaiping City, Guangdong Province, and has a history of more than five hundred years to this day. Every year on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month, Pancun Township is filled with colorful banners blocking the sun and the sound of firecrackers; more than forty villages hang lanterns and festoons in every household, and the people of the whole township crowd around a great flower lantern more than three meters high, touring the entire township from morning till dusk, with a ceremonial silk umbrella (luosan) leading the procession and dragons and lions following alongside. He advised each family in the village to hang lanterns, fire cannons and beat gongs and drums to wake the lion, so that it would keep the four beasts in check. Following his advice, the people of Pancun on the thirteenth day of the first month of the eighth year of the Tianshun era of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming (1464) lit lanterns, fired cannons, waved banners and shouted in every household, and the noise shook the heavens. It is said that from then on Pancun returned to peace and tranquility. From that year on, the people of Pancun have held lantern-dancing activities every year on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month, to avert disaster, pray for blessings and see out the old year and welcome the new. Every year people from the neighboring counties and cities of Taishan, Xinhui and Heshan come to visit and add to the excitement, and the whole lantern fair presents a scene of joy, bustling with noise and liveliness.
The five beast-shaped hills
The hills are read as five beasts whose lion has fallen asleep, and the resulting disorder was understood as the reason for the village's years of misfortune.
Lighting lanterns and beating gongs to wake the lion
In 1464 every household lit lanterns and beat drums on the thirteenth of the first month, and the village was said to have returned to peace thereafter.
The lantern parade led by the silk umbrella
On the thirteenth, forty-odd villages carry three-metre lanterns through the township from morning till dusk, led by a silk umbrella and flanked by dragon and lion teams.
Neighbouring counties come to join
Crowds from Taishan, Xinhui and Heshan come every year to watch and enliven the fair, making it a festival shared across neighbouring counties.
Villages competing in the number of lanterns
Umbrella, dragon and lion teams belong to separate villages, which compete on numbers rather than obeying a single charter, a cheap way of keeping the fair running for five centuries.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Chen Baisha instructed that Pancun had five black-stone beast mountains — Lion Mountain, Tiger Mountain, Elephant Mountain, Horse Mountain and Ox Mountain — whose five beasts held the village in check and should have ensured peace, but the lion, king of the five beasts, was in a deep slumber and had not awakened, while the other four beasts made trouble, which was why the locality suffered frequent disasters.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Pancun lantern fair is directly related to the location of Pancun: the area around Shuikou Town is near the sea, surrounded by hills and forests, with the five black-stone beast mountains of lion, tiger, elephant, horse and ox ranged around the village. Legend has it that the five beasts held the village in check, but the lion, king of the beasts, slept on unawakened, and so disasters struck frequently. On the night of the thirteenth of the first month in the eighth year of the Tianshun era of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming (1464), every household lit lanterns, fired cannons, waved banners and shouted to wake the lion, after which Pancun is said to have returned to peace, and from then on the lantern dance has been held every year on that day. This account explains the whole village's turn from danger to safety as the consequence of a chance display of lights and noise, and so the fair is held every year without asking whether it is still necessary — its function of expelling evil and welcoming auspiciousness has long been treated by the villagers as established fact. The scale of the fair likewise rests on the combined effort of the whole township: more than forty villages hang lanterns and festoons in every household, the people of the whole township crowd around a great flower lantern more than three meters high and tour the entire township, with a ceremonial silk umbrella leading the way and dragons and lions following, while people from the neighboring counties and cities of Taishan, Xinhui and Heshan come to add to the excitement. A ritual advised by an outside scholar, carried out jointly within the village and watched together by the whole township, eventually became the first lively event of the local year; its value lies precisely in turning a single act of consultation into a public time handed down for generations. Among the participants, the dragon dance teams and the colored lantern frames are mostly organized by the villages themselves; the ceremonial umbrella, dragon and lion belong to different villages, each village competing by the number of lanterns it sends out, with no need for unified organizational rules — for more than five hundred years it has relied on this loose yet stable mechanism of comparison. In recent years the fair still takes the thirteenth of the first month as its proper day and the procession route has not changed, but the number of lantern-framing households able to make great flower lanterns over three meters high has decreased by several, switching instead to ordering from other places or substituting small lantern groups — the first loosening to appear in this festival.
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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