{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Lantern Festival returns to Ukiah","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":390,"description":"New year’s blessings typically include wishes for a long life. Sunday, the last day of the lunar new year celebrations, coincided with the 115th birthday of Edie Ceccarelli, the third oldest person in the world. \r\n\r\nAt Alex Thomas Plaza in Ukiah, the Lantern Festival was back, after three years’ pandemic hiatus. Instilling Goodness Elementary and Developing Virtue Secondary Schools from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas offered lion and dragon dances, music, art and food for the public.\r\nThe festivities opened at noon, under the pavilion as a sporadic downpour soaked the streets. To the accompaniment of gongs and cymbals, a black and gold lion opened a scroll announcing the Year of the Water Rabbit, worked up the courage to leap onto a table, and uncovered a plate of treats, which it flung into the crowd.\r\n\r\nTeacher H.T. coordinates the dance groups for the boys’ school. He took a quick break between acts to explain the lion dance, as students dashed through the rain to put away their costumes and set up for the Chinese orchestra performance. The celebration opens with a lion dance because, “Once upon a time, during harvest time,” the farmers came out to find that all their crops had disappeared. So one day, they decided to use gongs and cymbals to scare away whatever had been destroying the crops. The lion dance is something like a spring cleaning ritual, to scare away whatever evil thing that might have bad designs on the crop. “So that’s why, every Lunar New Year, we start with the lion dance,” he concluded.\r\n\r\nThere was another kind of dancing, too. At a long table in what little sunlight there was, Dale, who teaches Chinese at the elementary and secondary schools, was guiding children through what she calls “a dance on the paper.” Calligraphy, she explained, “needs a lot of practice. But the process is very attractive to me. It’s a different kind of cultivation…It’s good training, to train your focus.”\r\n\r\nDale’s focus never wavered, as the orchestra struck up...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}