The Other China
燈節
The Fifteenth Day of the First Month of the New Year 正月十五 marks the first full moon of the Lunisolar New Year. Generally called Yuanxiao 元宵, literally ‘First Evening’, it is also the height of the Lantern Festival 燈節 which was traditionally celebrated from the Hanging of Lanterns 上燈 on the Thirteenth Day to the Taking Down of Lanterns 落燈 on the Eighteenth Day of the First Month. The First Evening is also variously called: 上元節、小正月、元夕、小年 or 春燈節.
In 2025, the 12th of February marks the end of the Lunisolar New Year celebrations which began with the last day of the old year, New Year’s Eve 除夕, the 28th of January. The celebrations vary widely but they generally feature both domestic and public displays of lanterns 燈飾, which are supposed to mimic the full moon, and the eating of Yuanxiao 元宵 (in the north) or Tangyuan 湯圓 (in the south), a kind of ball-shaped food made from glutinous rice flour. They are cooked and served in a soup made from the water they are boiled in. The shape and massing of Yuanxiao in a bowl is supposed to symbolise completion, togetherness and harmony.
On the occasion of Lantern Festival in 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency in the United States, we wrote that:
These weeks since the Chinese New Year also mark an extraordinary period for the world since the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America on the 20th of January. Turning modern tradition on its head, all that was new seems old again. Well indeed may one hope that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. What was a truism for China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party and its Chairman of Everything Xi Jinping, now seems to hold equally true for an America in the grip of Trump and the Republican Party.
Sic tempus, sic mores.
Even as China Heritage tracks the second Trump presidency, one that was inaugurated shortly before Chinese New Year, with a series titled Contra Trump, we continue to celebrate The Other China. To that end, we marked the last day of the Year of the Dragon with the Beijing-based artist Lao Shu 老樹 — see The Dragon Gives Way to the Snake — just as we welcomed the First Day of the First Month of the Year of the Snake in his company — Lofty Aspirations & Modest Wishes for the Year of the Snake. Here, again, as the New Year festivities come to an end with Lantern Festival, we seek solace in Lao Shu’s art and words — as well as in the calming presence of his cat.
***
We also recommend the Wusuli Boat Song 烏蘇里船歌, a modern Chinese classic, as interpreted for the Lantern Festival by Wu Fei 吳非, a genre-bending composer, guzheng virtuoso and vocalist. Fei is a dear friend of China Heritage and her work has graced our virtual pages over the years.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
12 February 2025
Fifteenth Day of the
First Month of the
Yisi Year of the Snake
乙巳蛇年
正月十五
元宵節
Best Just to Hang Out with a Cat
不如養貓作伴
Friends from back in the day
have mostly drifted away.
Sometimes we’re in touch,
though it’s hard to meet up.
We live in such unsettled times
best just to hang out with my cat.
With the rancorous masses at arm’s length
you can spare yourself a whole lot of bother.
— made by Lao Shu on The Arrival of Spring, Yisi Year of the Snake
Published on 8 February 2025
[Note: See also So Starts the Spring in The Tower of Reading.]
***
I asked my cat: how was New Year’s —
did you manage to enjoy yourself?
People are just so shallow, was the reply.
Everyone sat there playing on their phones.
— recorded by Lao Shu on the Second Day of the
First Month of the Yisi Year of the Snake
Published on 31 January 2025
***
Success, failure, glory, ignominy are evanescent,
in an instant they dissolve into nothingness.
The greatest challenge one faces in life
is being able to cope with the banality of it all.
Published on 7 February 2025
***
Over New Year’s I put on a jolly act
aware that what lies ahead is treacherous.
Then again, since there’s no way to escape,
I’m rejoining the fray, clutching some flowers.
— Lao Shu, upon returning to the welter of life
Published on 2 February 2025
***
We are but fragile things, cast
out to contend with the world.
All is but vanity, a passing fancy,
and as fleeting as mist in the wind.
— Lao Shu
Published on 30 January 2025
***
What’s it for, all of this frenetic activity?
Life is trivial yet as earnest as a kid’s game.
Who knows when we’ll meet up again —
Anyway, I’m smashed, you just do whatever.
— on having drinks with old friends over New Year’s
——正月與老友一聚吃酒
— Lao Shu
Published on 30 January 2025
***
Source: