【推荐1】Do you love seeing beautiful lanterns outside? The best time to do this is during the Lantern Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the first lunar (阴历) month. This year it is on Feb22, marking the end of Spring Festival celebrations.

Lanterns are a big part of the festival. One story says that the bright lanterns show respect for gods. Another says that people light lanterns to celebrate the declining (消退的) darkness of winter.

Watching lanterns is a great event. You see lanterns in any sizes and shapes you can imagine, from animals to plants and flowers. To make this activity more fun, people paste (粘贴) riddles (谜语) on the lanterns. “Ten plus ten, still is ten, ten minus ten, again is ten.” Guess what? It is a pair of gloves.

In some places, people like releasing sky lanterns, which are called Kongming lanterns. A sky lantern is a small hot air balloon made of paper, with an opening at the bottom, where there is a small fire source. When the bright lights fly high in the sky, people bless family members and make wishes. Releasing river lights is also a way to bless for each other. Usually, the lights are in the shape of a lotus (荷花).

In old times, the Lantern Festival was also romantic. At that time, young girls were not allowed to go out very often except during certain festivals. Therefore, looking at lanterns gave young people a chance to meet each other. A line from Xin Qiji, a poet during the Song Dynasty, shows this: “Anxiously, I searched for her in thousands, hundreds of ways. Suddenly I turned, and there she was in the declining light.”

【推荐2】Chinese people are, quite rightly, proud of their food. However, when foreigners like Britons and Americans think of Chinese food, their impression of it is different to what you might think.

Growing up in the UK, the Chinese food I was used to eating was food I now recognize as being from Guangdong. For example, a typical dish I would order would be pork in sweet and sour sauce, probably with some rice and spring rolls on the side. This is the type of food we generally eat because most Chinese immigrants(移民) to the UK have come from Guangdong. You can tell, because when most British people try to copy the sound of Chinese, they actually copy the sound of Guangdong people—hearing the real Putonghua is sometimes a shock to British people who have grown up thinking it sounds completely different!

British attitudes to Chinese food may be changing, though. Chinese-American chef Ken Hom has been on British TV for 30 years, and he told BBC Food: “Chinese food at the beginning of the 80s (in the UK) was sweet and sour pork, mainly. Most Brits had the unchangeable view of Chinese food. Now you are seeing more local Chinese food from Sichuan, Hunan and other areas of China. It is no longer just Guangdong food.” Similarly, to most Americans, Chinese food doesn’t go too far past orange chicken and fortune cookies, but more Chinese local dishes are becoming successful, especially in big cities like New York.

Attitudes have not quite changed completely, though. Many foreigners who live in China will be familiar with this question from a relative back at home: “Have they given you dog yet?” Yes, perhaps because people still know too little about Chinese culture, many people believe that Chinese people love to eat dog meat. And of course, some people do eat dogs, which to Americans is like “eating a member of one’s family” according to Vision Times. Also, Chinese people eat many other things people in the West do not—chicken claws, duck heads and some animals’ organs.

But what do foreigners think when they come to China and taste real Chinese food? You’ll be glad to know that in my experience, the impressions have been very good.

【推荐3】The “Chong Yang Festival” is celebrated on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, which is also known as the Double Ninth Festival.       1    .

Climbing mountains.

People like to climb mountains on this festival, so the Double Ninth Festival is also called “Mountain-climbing Festival”. The ninth lunar mouth, with clear autumn sky and cool air, is a good time for sightseeing.     2    . It is really cheerful to climb mountains and enjoy the beautiful nature at this clear time in autumn.

Climbing mountains also means “climbing to a higher position”.     3    . Climbing mountains on the Double Ninth Festival was already popular in the Tang Dynasty. A lot of poems were closely related to this custom.

Drinking Chrysanthemum Flower (菊花) Wine.

The chrysanthemum flower wine is made with special process. In ancient times, people usually picked fresh chrysanthemum flowers and leaves on the 9th of the 9th lunar month, and made the mixture of them and grains into the wine.     4    . The wine is said to be good for the health and make people live longer.

    5    .

The Double Ninth cake is also known as “flower cake”. It is from Zhou Dynasty. It is said that the cake was prepared after autumn harvests for farmers to have a taste of what was just in season before, and it gradually turned into the present cake for people to eat on the Double Ninth Festival.