Yuanxiao, unique food for lantern festival

When some shallow baskets of a tyre size began rotating in the streets, Chinese people know they are rolling in the Lantern Festival.

With some moist glutinous rice powder on the bottom, the basket coats by rolling small pieces of fillings into apricot-size rice balls -- yuanxiao, known as glutinous rice dumplings to foreigners. Most Chinese are expected to eat the unique food around Tuesday they observe the Lantern Festival which falls on February 26 this year. The festival is taken as the last day of the Spring Festival, or China's lunar new year festival.

"The coat has been the same, but not the fillings," said a woman in her 50s, "I would try chocolate yuanxiao this time."

For almost 1,000 years, yuanxiao has been filled with sweet stuffing of sesame seed paste, date paste or dried sweet-scented osmanthus.

Traditions and new trends co-exist

Lantern hanging is another custom which has lasted for 2,000 years. Some electric lamps were shaped according to the English abbreviation "WTO" at a lantern show being held in Daxing Districtin south Beijing.

Harry Potter, the teenage wizard which has swept through the global movie markets, tactfully came to China along with the arrival of this Spring Festival.

While children received movie tickets from the elderly as a lunar new year gift, some young people chose to spend the Lunar New Year Eve in western styled restaurants.

A surprise to foreigners, McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken(KFC) chain stores were crowded with young parents accompanying their children who were fond of French fries and burgers during the holiday.

Some traditions are fading away whereas some others are coming back again.

Lu Ruihua, governor of south China's Guangdong Province, put on a traditional Chinese silk jacket when extending greetings to local people.

Lisa Buckley, a foreign staff at the President's Office of Qinghua University, said the Chinese silk jacket is even in the trend at her hometown in the United States.

Family reunion is an everlasting theme of the Spring Festival. Airplanes, trains, buses, and ships have transported 1.7 billion passengers, most of whom were heading for home for the special occasion.

Telecommunications extend greetings

A survey done in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, indicates that the number of people who tried telephone, the Internet and short messaging to send their season's greeting surpassed for the first time the number of people who chose the traditional visits.

And half of the residents in Guangzhou, or nearly 500,000 people, traveled during the week-long holiday which started from February 12, says the survey.

Like yuanxiao, China's Spring Festival with a history of more than 4,000 years is being filled with new content under its traditional coat, said sociologists.

Lantern Festival

While many people are gradually returning to the routines of their daily lives following the celebrations of the Spring Festival, others are busy preparing for the arrival of the Yuanxiao Festival.

Also called the Lantern Festival, this event is an important traditional occasion, falling on the 15th day of the first month on the lunar calendar.

People often refer to the festivities of this occasion as "Nao Yuanxiao", meaning to have a spree. People in general agree that this festival marks the real end of the New Year celebrations.

Origin of Yuan Xiao

Despite the lack of a written history on yuanxiao, some scholars hold that the food began to emerge as early as the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), becoming popular during the period of the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

The popularity of yuanxiao during the festival has been reflected among folktales, one of the best-known is perhaps connected to Yuan Shikai (Yuan Shih-Kai, 1859-1916). As one of the most significant political figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Yuan was a high military official in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). He turned against the Qing, succeeded Sun Yat-sen as the first president of the Republic and attempted to found a new imperial dynasty. But people's love for yuanxiao aroused Yuan's suspicions, because a homonymous word for "yuanxiao" can mean "the destruction of the Yuan dynasty." Such an evil omen became so annoying to ambitious Yuan that he issued a nationwide order requiring people to give up the term "yuanxiao" and use "tangyuan" instead. Many believe this is the origin of "tangyuan," an alternative name for the popular food.

(People's Daily February 27, 2002)