According to legend, Lantern Festival is a pleasure in chaozhou people. The Lantern Festival begins, and the climax is around the 24th day of the first month, which lasts for nearly ten days and nights. In its heyday, there were more than 200 large lanterns in the city, including hundreds of dragon and phoenix lanterns, fish lanterns and fruit lanterns. Parade in eight clubs.
At the beginning of the lights, men and women, old and young, went out of the city in succession. At this time, people have forgotten the hardships of labor and life. However, seeing miles of long streets, drums and music ringing, candlelight flickering and crowds surging, the whole ancient city has turned into a sea of revelry, which is really a unique event for chaozhou people. For this reason, Chaozhou Lantern Festival was compiled into a song album "Hundred Curtain Lights", which has been sung among the people so far.
It is reported that Chaozhou lantern craft reached its peak in the late Qing Dynasty and even before War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. At that time, there were nearly ten lantern workshops in the city, including Lin Shengji, Liu Jingxin and Chen Wanshun. Among them, Lin Shengji is the most famous. About 20 years ago, Lin, the owner and artist of the studio, was invited to hold demonstrations and exhibitions in Hong Kong and Singapore, which caused a sensation.
Chaozhou Lantern is unique and exudes a strong flavor of local art. The earliest Chaozhou Lantern is framed by bamboo, framed with silk and painted with pastel on the surface, depicting costumes, and lit inside at night, which is charming and moving.
With the development of society, folk artists of past dynasties used their own labor and wisdom to constantly bring forth the old and bring forth the new, making this wonderful flower in the art garden more beautiful and lovely. They put iron wires into the characters, then put on elaborate embroidered colorful clothes like real people, with harmonious scenery and brilliant lights (headlights), and take well-known historical stories as the theme and content to form layered light screens, which are more magnificent and elegant, and become a special handicraft that appeals to both refined and popular tastes and is suitable for all ages. Since then, some artists have been ingenious, mixing lanterns with real people dressed up to confuse the real with the fake.
Before we know the artistic connotation of Chaozhou Lantern Art, it is hard to imagine its complexity and stress. There are nearly a thousand kinds of materials alone. And its artistic expression is more nuanced: in form, it can be divided into two categories: "hot lamp" and "plain lamp" "Hot lamp" is also called "war lamp"; "Plain lamp" is also called "Wen lamp". The former pays attention to the posture of bow and horse; The latter focuses on expressions and eyes.
But the quality of a screen lamp mainly depends on whether the characters are vivid or not. Their artistic image is very exquisite. For example, open faces can be divided into four categories: raw, rough, ugly and clean. There are junior students, senior students, senior students with white beard and junior students. Ugliness includes duck tail, beard, flower drum, female, monk, fat man, son, family boy and idle people. There are wenwu Dan, short Dan, etc. There are over forty kinds of "nets". It's really a variety of names, more exquisite than stage performance art.
Skillful artists created "tulle lanterns" on the basis of lanterns. If the lamp screen is a gorgeous peony flower presented by the artist, then the gauze lamp is a petite and bright Jin Juhua presented by the artist.
Yarn lanterns are the epitome of lanterns. Their numbers generally range from three inches to more than one foot, and their names and contents are similar to those of lantern screens, but they are scaled down and simpler. However, gauze lanterns are exquisite, cheap and easy to move, and they are good gifts and are deeply loved by the masses.
After the founding of New China, with the passage of customs, Chaozhou swimming screen lights also stopped. Occasionally, some cultural departments hire artists to make some representative lantern screens for display in the West Lake Square in Chaozhou, such as "The Battle of Jinshan Drum", "Mulan Joining the Army", "Young Women", "Knife Meeting", "White-haired Girl", "Five Golden Flowers" and "Red Female Soldiers", which are well received by the masses. 65438-0979 Chaozhou Lantern Festival was invited to participate in the National Lantern Festival Exhibition in Guangzhou Cultural Park. Chaodeng is deeply loved by the audience for its large-scale characters such as Water Man Jinshan Temple, Monkey King Thrice Defeats the Skeleton Demon and butterfly lovers, and received rave reviews.
The custom of decorating lanterns on the Lantern Festival has a long history. Chaozhou is known as the folk custom of Lantern Festival, and gauze lanterns (lanterns) are the dazzling pearls in the program.
Yarn lights are divided into "on-off lights" and "on-off lights". On-off lights fix figures, pavilions and pavilions on the light screen, and the on-off lights are equipped with different mechanisms, so that the head and hands of the figures can rotate and even walk in full screen. Tulle lanterns are characterized by meticulous workmanship, beautiful shape, accurate proportion, beautiful posture and dynamic dance; Gorgeous ornaments, wrinkled, natural and free and easy, lifelike. This exquisite lantern is so beautiful that it makes people linger.