Sibu Tales: Festive Lanterns

My paternal grandfather was a very frugal man and he was not the type who had lanterns for occasions. Nor were my maternal uncles and aunties.

I don't remember any one in the 1950's have have decorative and festive lanterns in Sibu.

Decorative lanterns only came in when the commercial lanterns became available with the opening up of China and shops selling Chinese goods started to spring up every where.

Chinese commercial festive lanterns have spread to the UK. Photo I took a few years ago.

Back to our Foochow customs, here is an interesting extract about lanterns:

On the fourth day of the lunar new year, the younger brother of a newly-married woman must send a huadeng (decorated lantern) to the house his sister joined.

In Fuzhou dialect, deng is the homonym of ding, which means family member in Chinese. The act of sending a lantern is seen as a favorable symbol of sending a newborn family member.

"At the day of sending the lantern, people can often see in the streets young boys dressed in brand-new clothes, shouldering a sugarcane with a lantern hung at one end of it," said Lin Yichai, another elderly Fuzhou native.

The errand of sending the lantern is quite remunerative for the young runner, as the child will be indulged to eat to his heart's content at the house and will receive a handsome yasuiqian (money given to children at Spring Festival as a gift).

But it also takes him some effort to earn the reward, as he has to endure the embarrassment and heckles from his peers on the way to the home.