Lantern Festival--close ups

Lantern Festival--village shrines

Another cool thing about being invited to the village celebration was being part of the celebrations and seeing things up close.  We were treated as participants and encouraged to participate--especially Babes.  (and yes, those are sparklers lit in the house)

Lantern Festival --the fireworks

A large part of the Chinese New Year celebrations include the use of fireworks and loud noises to ward off evil spirits.  As far as I can tell people will set off fireworks from the day before Chinese New Year (sometimes even earlier) until the Lantern Festival.  The village celebration was no different.  As we wandered from place to place following the dragon and lion dancers they would set off fireworks in each location.  Sometimes the fireworks were so close we'd have firework debris raining down on our heads.  (My American sense of safety was severely threatened by this) 

 

The big fireworks displays came in boxes.  Basically you lit one fuse and the whole box would (in theory) ignite one by one, creating a brilliant, effortless display.  I don't know how many boxes were purchased for just the Lantern festival but there were fireworks all day and well into the night.  

 There were also the strings of little noisemakers that just pop pop pop on the ground.  I can't even begin to estimate how many, but the carnage was massive.  Here are just two shots of firecracker carcasses (and remember we did this at every family shrine, and in the fields, and by the temple, and in several other spots)

The smoke was crazy when we went home we smelled of fireworks, but they were pretty.   And every house had a pretty good display. 

Lantern Festival --What we did

Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday on the Chinese calendar, in this village, I was told that even if people cannot make it for the CNY's eve or CNY they will come home for the Lantern Festival (I don't know if it's true of everyone or just this village).  From what I could tell, and what people told me, during the Lantern Festival they had someone (priest?) bless all the village family homes, fields, and shrines.  This involved a lot of walking and tramping through fields following the dragon and lion dancers.  Parts of it were pretty interesting.  There was a call and response, dancers, drummers, and I think most everyone followed to all of the houses. 

 

Lantern Festival--what we ate.

So after my last post, DH was making fun of me, saying "you keep writing about it, you should go do it."  And I did.  For the past two weeks, any time someone invited me to do something, I did it.  Unfortunately, that left little time left for other things, like cooking, cleaning, or blogging.  I didn't even knit!!
But this week, I have a lighter schedule so I wanted to get up some picture posts about the things I've been up to.  I want to start off with The Lantern Festival.
The Lantern Festival is the traditional end to the Chinese New Year celebrations in China.  We were invited to one of DH's co-worker's village to partake in the celebrations.  It was an interesting experience to say the least.  The place was way out of town, but not considered the countryside, more like the suburbs (although to my mind any place that has cows is country!).  I'm going to break up the Lantern Festival pictures into groups.  Today is the feasting part of the festival because no festival is complete without a feast.