正月十六日

On the sixteenth the imperial carriage did not go out. After the morning meal, music played at the gate, the curtain rolled up, the imperial seat faced the balcony, and the ten thousand households were proclaimed. Those who arrived first could still glimpse the imperial face — small cap, red robe, alone at a table. Attendants stood on either side with canopies and fans outside the curtain. In a moment the curtain came down, music played, and the ten thousand households were free to roam and enjoy. The two turret towers faced each other: on the left, colored pavilions and tents in the sequence of Prince Yun and the others; on the right, those of Grand Preceptor Cai and the executive relatives. From time to time a golden phoenix flew down from the tower to the various pavilions, bestowing gifts without cease. In the pavilions, household singers competed with new melodies, and with the mountain frames and platforms above and below, the music boiled. Below the western turret the Kaifeng prefect kept order over his pavilion, criminals arrayed before him, sentences passed from time to time to warn the ignorant. From the tower verbal decrees were sometimes relayed, specially pardoning offenders.

Then the splendid lamps and precious torches, the moonlight and flower-light, mingled in a soft haze, their glow reaching far and near. At the third watch, from the tower a small red gauze lantern ball descended along a rope to mid-air, and the people all knew the carriage was returning to the palace. In a moment they heard the crack of whips outside the tower, and on the mountain and the tower, above and below, hundreds of thousands of lamps went out all at once.

Then the carriages of the great houses, packed rim to rim from the palace front, all headed south to Xiangguo Temple. Before the great hall a music pavilion was set up, the military played, and along the corridors were poem-board lanterns reading: The azure sky, the Milky Way about to descend; moonlight like water shining on the towers. And: Fire trees and silver flowers merge; the star bridge and its iron locks open. The boards were carved with the characters, covered inside with gauze, lamps secretly burning within, arranged in sequence — a delight to see. Before the Zisheng Pavilion the Buddha’s tooth was displayed with water lanterns; viewing spots were claimed by the chief councillors, imperial relatives and the favored close to the throne. The liveliest spots: the Nine Mothers Hall and the east and west tower courts, Huilin, Zhihai, Baofan — each competing with lamps and candles, brilliance vying with brilliance, until dawn. All the other temples and monasteries opened for the people to burn incense: the Kaibao and Jingde great Buddha temples all had music pavilions, playing and lighting lamps. Only the Daoist temples were forbidden to set up lamps. Next, the Baozhen Temple had jade-pillar and jade-curtain window lanterns. The lanes and Maxing, the spice shops and tea houses and wine shops — each outdid the others with lamp novelties. Among them the Lianhua Wang spice shop’s lights stood out, with monks performing cymbal-crashing and drum-beating — no passerby failed to stop. Every gate had an official music pavilion. Ten thousand streets and a thousand lanes, all teeming and roaring. At every lane entrance without a music pavilion, small shadow-play booths were set up, to keep the neighborhood’s children from getting lost and to draw them together. The Palace Front guard, inside the Right Yi Gate, set up a music pavilion opposite it for their own families to climb the city wall and watch. The palace bestowed tea, wine, cosmetic powder and money. The military camps were by law not permitted to roam at night; each raised lantern balls on bamboo poles into the air, far and near, high and low, like flying stars. The lanes crisscrossed; the city gates were not closed. And there were deep lanes and small alleys with embroidered door-curtains and pearl bead-screens, cleverly made new costumes, vying in splendor; spring feeling stirring, wine-mood mellow, refined encounters and hidden joys, every moment precious; the scene so teeming that the watches passed unnoticed. Fine horses clip-clopping, fragrant carriage wheels rumbling, the young men of the Five Mausoleums singing full-length down the road, ten thousand households and a thousand gates, the pipes not yet silent; the market people selling jade plum blossoms, night moths, bees, snow willows, bodhi leaves, ke-tou round dumplings, pai-tou fried cakes. The fried cakes alone came out on green umbrellas from bamboo frames, decorated with plum-red and gold-thread small lanterns; lanterns were also set before and behind the frames, with drums beating the rhythm as they spun in circles — called the spinning round — found everywhere in the streets and lanes. Through the nineteenth, when the lanterns were taken in, the city gates were not closed for five nights; an edict had extended the days. In the Xuanhe era, from the twelfth month at the Suanzao Gate (also called Jinglong), lanterns were lit as at Xuande Gate on festival nights; a platform was also set up below the gate, extending south to the Baolu Temple, with guanpu trading on both sides. Outside the Chenhui Gate a viewing stand was set up, enclosed by thorn branches, about fifty to seventy paces around. The capital’s vendors sold quail-shaped guduo dumplings, round dumplings, pai cakes, white sausage, crystal sliced fish, ke-tou fine noodles, roast chestnuts, gingkoes, salted-fermented-bean soup, chicken segments, golden tangerines, olives, longans, lychees. All kinds of market goods were closely arrayed, ready for the imperial summons. When the emperor himself sometimes appeared at the viewing stand, the gate officers, palace physicians, secretaries and commanders all stood before the curtain, attended by three to five disciples. The hemp-residue braziers blazed, bright as day. Ladies watching were stopped by palace officials who offered a golden cup of wine and sent them back. Up to the Lantern Festival this was called the pre-viewing. Only Supervisor Zhou’s gourd soup: the tribute version cost one hundred twenty cash each, its fine ingredients distinct from the market’s ten-cash version.