A string of festive events, such as riddle-solving and folk art demonstrations, will be held tomorrow afternoon at Shenzhen Museum to mark the Lantern Festival.
Visitors solve riddles at last year’s Lantern Festival event at Shenzhen Museum. Photo by Hu Lei
This year, Feb. 19 is the 15th day of the first month in the Chinese lunar calendar, the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebration.
All events are free to attend.
Highlighted performances include Sichuan opera face-changing and musical saw performances.
Face-changing performers
Face-changing is an ancient Chinese art that is part of the Sichuan opera. Performers wear brightly colored costumes and masks, typically depicting well-known characters from the opera. They change from one mask to another almost instantaneously with the swipe of a fan, the movement of the head, or the wave of the hand.
Shenzhen musician Li Yuanqing will play the musical saw, a flexible handsaw played by holding the handle between the knees and bending the blade while bowing along the flat edge.
Li Yuanqing
The musical saw is found in the folk music of Russia and rural America, and is a popular vaudeville instrument.
Meanwhile, lion dances, Hakka songs, Beijing opera, Cantonese opera, Henan opera, martial arts, and handicraft demonstrations, such as paper-cutting, rope-knitting, dough sculpture and walnut sculpture, will also be presented. The museum will serve tangyuan, a glutinous rice ball filled with sesame or peanut butter, to visitors after the performances. Tangyuan is a typical snack eaten during the Lantern Festival.
Time: 2:30 p.m. (performances and handicrafts), 3:30 p.m. (tangyuan serving), Feb. 19
Venue: Shenzhen Museum, Block A, Civic Center, Futian District (福田区市民中心A区深圳博物馆)
Metro: Line 2 or 4 to Civic Center Station (市民中心站), Exit B