THE LANTERN FESTIRVAL

New Roman">THE LANTERN FESTIVAL

Today is the traditional Lantern Festival. The traditional food for today is sweet dumplings made of glutinous rice and flour. They are all round.

My son got up this morning and asked for the sweet dumplings. My wife refused him and he got so angry as to refuse to get up. Despite my remonstrance he still persisted. For reconciliation I cooked some for him.

After breakfast my wife and I went out for an outing with my son. We went to a nearby residential area for workers who work for Shengli Oil Field. Exhilaratedly my son climbed up the rockery located within the area. We followed him here and there. After a while he made friends with some children about his age. They began to play together: do fireworks, play games, and even ignite some white hay for fun. With his friends he didn’t need our company any more. With much concern about his safety we kept watch him from a distance. From time to time he would run to us for provisions---food and drink. He played there all the morning.

When it was about two o’clock in the afternoon, we decided to return. My son asked for some fireworks. So we went to a supermarket to buy some fireworks, as well as some food for ourselves. After that we returned home.

When we set out on the outing, we were against the wind, which exhausted us a lot. However we returned here quite enjoyably, since we had a tail wind. My son was very pleased with the fireworks we bought for him.

After supper sounds of all kinds of fireworks are resounded from all directions.

When we were young, we had our lanterns made of paper of different colors. Children don’t like all those things now. They prefer fireworks. As for sweet dumplings, some children like them, some not.