{"id":1498,"date":"2011-03-07T12:11:59","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T12:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.news.clicdublin.ie\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2011-03-08T11:43:39","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T11:43:39","slug":"lanterns-mark-chinese-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/?p=1498","title":{"rendered":"Lanterns Mark Chinese New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month the Chinese celebrated the start of their new year, the year of the rabbit.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Lantern Festival marks the 15<sup>th<\/sup> and final day of the\u00a0Chinese New Year festivities. It is the first night of the new year to see a full moon, and the Chinese believe that when there is a full bright moon in the sky, there should be thousands of colourful lanterns hung out for\u00a0everyone to appreciate and celebrate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the night of the festival,\u00a0lanterns decorated with pictures of\u00a0birds, beasts, historical figures, and a\u00a0number of\u00a0various other\u00a0themes are hung outside\u00a0 homes and along the streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are many different beliefs about the origin of the Lantern Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.clicnews.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/lantern-festival103.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.clicnews.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/lantern-festival103-300x203.jpg\" alt=\"Lanterns being released\" width=\"300\" height=\"203\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeffOne legend claims that many years ago fierce beasts roamed freely in China. One day, a hunter mistook a sacred bird for a dangerous beast and killed it. The heaven Emperor was furious and ordered the land to\u00a0be burned. Luckily, he had a very kind daughter who warned the people.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0One man suggested that every family light up lanterns and fireworks to fool the Emperor into thinking that the land had been burned. On the 15<sup><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">th<\/span><\/sup> day of the first lunar month, the heaven Emperor looked down on China to see red fire everywhere. From then on, people continued to light up lanterns and fireworks to celebrate the success.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Customs associated with the Lantern Festival include eating Yuanxio(a small\u00a0rice ball sometimes served in soup), guessing lantern riddles and the lion and dragon dance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Lion Dance is performed at many Chinese celebrations as it is seen as a symbol of bravery and strength believed to scare away\u00a0 evil and bring luck.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1509\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1509\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.clicnews.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/fire-dragon-dance.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1509\" src=\"http:\/\/www.clicnews.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/fire-dragon-dance-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"Dragon Dance\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1509\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Participants perform a dragon dance in celebration of the Chinese New Year, in Beijing, China, on February 6, 2011.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This year, the Chinese welcomed the year of the Rabbit. From the chinese zodiac,\u00a0it \u00a0indicates a year of caution and calm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month the Chinese celebrated the start of their new year, the year of the rabbit.\u00a0 The Lantern Festival marks the 15th and final day of the\u00a0Chinese New Year festivities. It is the first night of the new year to see a full moon, and the Chinese believe that when there is a full bright [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressdemo.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}