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My Lantern Festival
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THE Lantern Festival lives in my childhood memories.
Back in my hometown, it was always very cold on the day of Lantern Festival. We didn't know the day was also called the Chinese Valentine's Day but we loved the day whole-heartedly because we could play in the streets till late at night, parading with lanterns in hand.
Every kid would linger before the lantern-selling stalls starting on the fifth or sixth day of the lunar New Year, bargaining hard for the beautiful lanterns with our limited sum of lucky money. Boys would plunge into a pile of plane-shaped, ship-shaped or tiger-shaped lanterns and girls would go for lotus lanterns, golden fish lanterns and rabbit lanterns. Candles lit the lanterns up.
I could never decide which one to buy, because every lantern looked lovely.
I long dreamed of buying a tiger-shaped lantern, but because it was not supposed to be for girls, I never had the nerve to buy one.
On the night of the Lantern Festival, kids hurried through supper and tried to be the first to go out with his or her lantern. Ours being a small city, the central square would be crammed with several hundred kids, who had come from every street and lane with lanterns in hand.
On the way as we paraded on, familiar faces continued to join in. When we reached dark places, we would sing loudly to drive away the fear of the many evil spirits dimly remembered from old tales.
It was not always, happy, though. During my first year in primary school, my flower lantern caught fire right before the parade was to begin. In tears, I pasted colourful papers to the remains to make a new lantern. And when finally I was ready for the parade that night, kids in the neighbourhood had returned for sleep.
Lily Lan
Guangzhou Foreign Languages and Foreign Trade University
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