元宵

On the fifteenth day of the first month, the Lantern Festival: since the winter solstice of the previous year the Kaifeng prefecture had been binding the mountain frames, timber erected directly facing Xuande Tower, and the crowds had already gathered along both sides of the Imperial Avenue. Strange arts and rare talents, song and dance and a hundred entertainments, scale to scale, music heard ten li away. Ball games and football, tightrope and pole-climbing. Zhao Yeren ate cold noodles upside down. Zhang Jiuge swallowed an iron sword. Li Waining, medicine-method puppets. A young strongman spat five-colored water and rolled flaming clay balls. Da Teluo — ash medicine. Guduo’er — zaju. Wen Datou and Xiao Cao — zither. Dang Qian — pipes. Sun Si — alchemical formulas. Wang Shier — conjuring. Zou Yu and Tian Diguang — comic skits. Su Shi and Meng Xuan — football. Yin Changmai — Five Dynasties histories. Liu Baiqin — insect tricks. Yang Wenxiu — drums and pipes. And monkeys performing a hundred tricks, fish leaping through knife gates, bees and butterflies summoned, mole crickets called up. The rest — medicine sellers and diviners, sand-writing and earth riddles — novel and ingenious by the day, refreshing the eye and ear.

On the seventh day the envoys took their leave, and the lantern mountain was dressed in color — gold and blue flashing, brocade shimmering. The north face was hung with silk decorations, the frames painted with immortal scenes. Medicine sellers and diviners from the market stalls were arranged across three gates, each with silk-bound gold-lettered plaques: the central gate called the Gate of the Capital, the flanking gates the Left and Right Gates of the Imperial Guard, and above them a great plaque reading Xuanhe: Sharing Joy with the People. Flanking the mountain, silk-bound Wenshu and Puxian bodhisattvas rode lions and white elephants, water flowing from their five fingers, their hands moving. Pulleys raised water to the mountain’s peak, stored in wooden tanks, released at intervals like a waterfall. On the flanking gates, straw bundles were bound into dragon shapes, covered with green gauze, tens of thousands of lamps set densely on the straw — from afar they coiled like two dragons in flight. From the mountain to Xuande Tower stretched a horizontal avenue of a hundred zhang, fenced with thorn branches: the thorn basin. Inside stood two great poles scores of zhang tall, hung with silk-dressed paper figures of acrobats that swayed like flying immortals. Music pavilions were set up, with prefectural musicians and entertainments from both armies. Above, Xuande Tower’s yellow-silk curtains were lowered; behind them sat the imperial throne. A yellow gauze canopy was pitched, the Palace Dragons holding yellow canopies and fans outside the curtain. Two turret towers each hung a lantern ball a zhang square, burning candle logs, with music inside the curtains. The laughter of palace women drifted down to the crowds below. At the tower’s base a timber platform was built with painted railings, imperial guards standing in rows on both sides in brocade robes, flowers in their headcloths, bearing truncheons, facing the music pavilion. The Court Band and the Platform Players alternated zaju performances. Near the gate the palace guards stood in ranks. The common people watched from below the platform, and the musicians led them in mountain shouts.