Qinhuai Lantern Festival is a popular folk cultural activity in Nanjing, also known as Jinling Lantern Festival, Confucius Temple Lantern Festival, is the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage, has the reputation of "the world's first lantern festival" and "Qinhuai lantern color armor in the world", is China's only set of lantern exhibition, lantern festival and lantern market as one of the large-scale comprehensive lantern festival, but also China's longest-lasting, the largest number of participants, the largest scale of folk lantern festival.
The history of the Qinhuai Lantern Festival can be traced back to the Southern Dynasties, when the traditional Lantern Festival was held in the capital Jiankang (now Nanjing), which was the first in the country and the earliest lantern festival in China. It developed rapidly during the Tang Dynasty and reached its peak during the Ming Dynasty. Nanjing is the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties and the capital of the Ten Dynasties, and the Qinhuai Lantern Festival, as an important folk activity, has always been a social and cultural space for the people of Nanjing to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, pray for auspiciousness, and celebrate lively. Qinhuai culture is the representative of the ancient Jinling civilization, and the Qinhuai Lantern Festival is an important carrier for inheriting the excellent traditional culture of Qinhuai.
The history of the Qinhuai Lantern Festival can be traced back to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties period, according to the literature, as early as the beginning of the Southern Dynasties, Nanjing City held the Lantern Festival.
During the Southern Dynasties, the custom of holding the Lantern Festival appeared in the national capital Jiankang (now Nanjing), which is the earliest record of the Lantern Festival in China. "Southern History" describes the grand occasion of the Shangyuan Festival (Lantern Festival) in Jiankang: "Tens of thousands of fires, if the galaxy is bright and the sky is clear, the crowds of people are surging, and there is no gap in the wide court. Later Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming era, the Lantern Festival Lantern Festival is more and more prosperous, skilled lantern craftsmen emerge in endlessly, the lantern production is more and more formal, magnificent.
After the Sui Dynasty, although Jinling was neglected, activities such as lantern display and lantern viewing during the Lantern Festival have begun to become popular.
After Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, established the capital of Nanjing, he advocated the Lantern Festival as a grand event, and extended the annual Lantern Festival in Nanjing to ten nights, making it the longest Lantern Festival in Chinese history. During this period, the Qinhuai Lantern Festival entered a climax of development, and Zhu Yuanzhang spent a lot of manpower, material and financial resources every year to produce a considerable number of lanterns to attract people to participate in the large-scale Lantern Festival.
In the Lantern Festival of the fifth year of Hongwu (1372), Zhu Yuanzhang even ingeniously ordered 10,000 water lanterns to be set off on the Qinhuai River. At the beginning of the seventh year of Yongle (1409), Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, "gave hundreds of officials ten days off on the Yuan Festival", and continued to put up lanterns to create a festive atmosphere. Three years later, he ordered to organize a lantern festival outside the noon gate of the Nanjing Imperial Palace, gather skilled craftsmen, carefully tie the "long live" lantern of Aoshan, and enjoy with the people. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the picture scrolls such as "The Scenery of the Southern Capital" depicted the dazzling fireworks of Aoshan Mountain and the lively scenes of the people's performances. In the late Ming Dynasty, the Lantern Festival depicted in the "Zhengde Jiangning County Chronicles" was even more prosperous.
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, Nanjing's lamp market was mainly concentrated in the area of Diqiao and Pingshi Street. In the late Qing Dynasty, the Diqiao Lantern City gradually migrated south to the area of Confucius Temple.
After 1949, the Confucius Temple still held the "Lantern Market" around the Lantern Festival every year, and the scale was large and small. However, this event was interrupted during the "Decade of Turmoil".
In 1985, Nanjing resumed the historical annual Qinhuai Lantern Festival. Historically, the Qinhuai Lantern Festival was mainly distributed in the Qinhuai River Basin in Nanjing. For example, inside and outside the palaces of the dynasties built here, as well as the Confucius Temple, Sanshan Street, Diqiao, Pingshi Street, Shangxinhe and other cultural and commercial prosperous areas. The core area mainly includes Confucius Temple, Zhan Garden, Bailuzhou Park, Wang Dao Xie An Exhibition Hall, Wu Jingzi's Former Residence Exhibition Hall, Jiangnan Gongyuan Exhibition Hall, Zhonghua Gate Wengcheng Exhibition Hall, as well as Zhonghua Road, Pingjiangfu Road, Zhanyuan Road, and Pipa Road.
The production of Qinhuai lanterns integrates traditional Chinese handicraft skills such as weaving, painting, calligraphy, paper-cutting, shadow puppetry, embroidery, and sculpture. As far as the production materials are concerned, the materials used to make the skeleton mainly include bamboo, trees, rattan, wheat straw, animal horns, metal, etc.; The materials that constitute the light source have developed from the use of pine resin, animal and vegetable oil, lacquer, paraffin, kerosene and other fuels to the use of bamboo, grass, cotton cores, etc. Its surface translucent materials have also developed with the development of the times, including various colors of translucent paper, silk silk, painting yarn, cotton cloth, as well as synthetic silk forging, plastic film, special glass, etc. Its production process has integrated a series of craft skills and production methods such as woodworking, lacquerwork, painting, carving, clay sculpture, braiding, pasting, welding, mechanical transmission, sound and light audio, electronic program control, etc.
From a historical point of view, from the traditional single lamps such as lotus lanterns, lion lanterns, rabbit lanterns, goldfish lanterns, ** lamps, ingots lanterns, to a variety of combination lanterns, large-scale lanterns, and with the progress of the times created including ocean-going ships, carrier rockets and various lanterns reflecting urban construction and mountain and forest landscapes, its categories have reached more than 400 kinds. In addition to the display of lanterns, the Qinhuai Lantern Festival also includes other folk culture and art categories in Nanjing, such as Nanjing paper-cutting, empty bamboo, knots, carving, shadow puppetry, animal dance, Yangge, shaking, and stilt walking.
Judging from the shape and content of the Qinhuai lanterns, and from the cultural environment of the Qinhuai Lantern Festival, it fully embodies the artistic essence of the lanterns and lanterns. From the perspective of folklore, it condenses the spiritual temperament, cultural style, social value and life pursuit of the people of Nanjing, and opens up the space for the survival and continuation of Nanjing's local folk art.
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