The Spring Festival holiday has passed for most of people. However, Chinese New Year is not over yet! According to tradition, it is until the 15th day of the first lunar month (正月十五 zhèng yuè shí wǔ) that Chinese New Year is fulfilled, which is also known as Lantern Festival (元宵节 yuán xiāo jié). Yuánxiāojié is the first festival after Chinese New Year when people light up lantern(点灯 diǎn dēng), eating sweet dumplings(吃汤圆 chī tāng yuán) and guessing lantern riddles(猜灯谜 cāi dēng mí).
You must have heard of the tradition of having dumplings because Chinese people are foodie, but do you know the history of lantern riddles? The activity first appeared in the capital of Song Dynasty (960-1279), Lin’an, where some people wrote riddles on “note paper” and pasted them on colorful lanterns for others to guess. Since this activity can inspire people and arouse their interest, it has become popular among all walks of life.
Chinese character is quintessence of the language. If you want to learn Chinese, then learning the characters will help you to better understand and memorize this pictograph. Here we have prepared some puzzles of Chinese characters if you want to get in the holiday spirit. Confident of the Chinese character you have learnt? No worries, we are beginner friendly. 🙂
一
HINT: What is the Chinese character for “one biting off ox’s tail”? What is the “tail” of the Chinese character “ox”?
二
HINT: What is the Chinese character for ”A family that has eleven people.“Think of the structural combination of Chinese characters “eleven” and “measure word for number of people in family”.
三
HINT: What is the Chinese character for ”BIG head, MIDDLE heartless and SMALL for the whole“? Put the head, middle and whole part together from the Chinese characters “big”, “middle” and “small”.
四
HINT: What is the Chinese character for “Four little men carry wood.”
五
HINT: What is the Chinese character for “A PEARL in the PALM.” If you put a “pearl” on the upper part of the character “palm”, what would you get?
六
HINT: What is the Chinese character after you delete A DOT from “玉”? Don’t say “王”, not that easy!
七
HINT: What is the idiom for this little poem? You can get one character from each line.
八
HINT: Add one more stroke to the character “白”, what character can you get? Answer is not limited to only one!
Can you figure out all the Chinese characters? I am sure this won’t be too difficult for you with the hints given. Leave your guessings in the comments below! The answer will be published in Wechat on the Lantern Festival, this Friday. Looking forward to know your answers. Do not cheat!
