Qinhuai Lantern Fair, also known as Jinling Lantern Fair, Jinling Lantern Festival, and officially named Lantern Fair on Qinhuai River, is a popular folk custom celebration of the Lantern Festival in the Nanjing area. Modern usage refers to the large-scale fair held yearly at the Confucius Temple of Nanjing between Spring Festival and Lantern Festival. There has been 25 fairs held up to date, and it is one of the most famous celebration of Lantern Festival in China. On the day of Lantern Festival, the fair reaches its climax. An old Nanjing saying, "Without enjoying lanterns in the Confucius Temple, you haven't spent the Nian (the Lunar New Year); without having a lantern of the Confucius Temple, you haven't had a good Nian." demonstrates the popularity of this fair. On June 2, 2006, the fair was named as one of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of China by the government of People's Republic of China The most recent lantern festival took place on February 17, 2011.
Famous quotes containing the words lantern and/or fair:
“When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
The fire got out through crannies in the stove
And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,
As much at home as if they’d always danced there.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,—nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)