Yuanxiao Festival or the Lantern Festival is a traditional Chinese holiday on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, fourteen days after Chinese New Year's Day (around the end of January and the beginning of February). In the country and town, people celebrate it heartily. For some reason, there is often a bigger celebration in the rural areas, especially in the North.
The most popular food for this festival is yuanxiao, a kind of sweet dumpling made of glutinous rice or wheat flour. Apart from yuanxiao, the customary foods vary from place to place. In Shaanxi Province, people take yuanxiao tea, a sort of soup made of boiled flour mixed with vegetables and fruits; in Luoyang and Lingbao, Henan Province, people favor jujube paste; in Kunming, Yunnan Province, people prefer bean dough. Other folk customs of the Lantern Festival include attending the lantern fair, guessing riddles and performing traditional festivities.
