The Lantern Festival is one of China’s traditional festivals, also known as the Shangyuan Festival, Little New Year, Yuanxi, or the Festival of Lights. It falls on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month each year.

The fifteenth day of the first lunar month marks the first full-moon night of the year, a night when the year begins anew and the earth returns to spring. People celebrate this occasion, which also serves as an extension of the Chinese New Year festivities.

The Lantern Festival features a series of traditional folk activities, primarily including admiring lanterns, eating tangyuan (sweet glutinous rice dumplings), guessing lantern riddles, and setting off fireworks. In addition, many places also stage traditional folk performances such as dragon lantern parades, lion dances, stilt walking, land-boat rowing, yangge dancing, and Taiping drum playing.

In June 2008, the Lantern Festival was inscribed into the second batch of China’s National Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

Riddles have always been a traditional Chinese puzzle game for intellectual amusement. To enrich employees’ cultural life, enliven the festive atmosphere, and create a positive cultural environment, this year our company also organized a “Lantern Riddle Guessing” event.

A lantern with one side against the wall and the other three sides pasted with riddles, set for people to ponder and guess, was called “beating the lantern riddles.” The riddle themes were drawn at will from classical texts, poetry, the Hundred Schools of Thought, legendary tales and novels, as well as proverbs, everyday objects, insects and shellfish, flowers and plants, and vegetables and medicinal herbs. Those who guessed correctly received prizes such as towels and fans, sachets, fruits, and food items — known as “riddle gifts.” Some colleagues paused to gaze and observe, some racked their brains in deep thought, and some huddled together whispering in discussion, while those who knew the answers stepped forward with lively strides to claim the riddles.

The content was both close to everyday life and rich in cultural resonance. Through this process of learning through entertainment, employees were encouraged to think actively and innovate. The “Lantern Riddle Guessing” event was well loved by the majority of employees and also helped foster a civilized, joyous, and harmonious atmosphere across the company. “A melody of pipes and songs, spring seems vast as the sea; a thousand gates ablaze with lights, the night appears bright as day.”

May all the wishes we make during this Lantern Festival come true one by one in the year ahead.