Banquet in the context of "Banqueting houses"

Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more commonly one of the activities or events developed over thousands of years specifically to engage an audience.

Although people's attention is captured by different things due to individual preferences, most forms of entertainment are recognisable and familiar. Storytelling, music, drama, dance, and various kinds of performance exist in all cultures, were supported in royal courts, and developed into sophisticated forms over time, eventually becoming available to the general public. Modern times have accelerated this process through an entertainment industry that records and sells entertainment products. Entertainment can be adapted to suit any scale, ranging from an individual choosing private entertainment from an enormous array of pre-recorded products, to a banquet for two, to parties of any size with music and dance, to performances for thousands, and even global audiences.

A guang or gong is a particular shape used in Chinese art for vessels, originally made as Chinese ritual bronzes in the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1046 BCE), and sometimes later in Chinese porcelain. They are a type of ewer which was used for pouring rice wine at ritual banquets, and often deposited as grave goods in high-status burial. Examples of the shape may be described as ewers, ritual wine vessels, wine pourers and similar terms, though all of these terms are also used of a number of other shapes, especially the smaller tripod jue and the larger zun.

The guang has a single thick foot, and a thick hollow body that represents one or more stylized animals (some have a head at both ends). Guangs have a vertical handle at one end and a spout at the other, both zoomorphic, and were often highly decorated with taotie. The handle of the guang is of often in the shape of the neck and head of an animal with stylized horns, and the spout of the vessel is in the form of the head of a creature whose mouth constitutes the end of the spout. The back and animal head at the pouring end usually are a removable lid, lifted off for pouring.

Rice wine is an alcoholic beverage fermented from rice, traditionally consumed in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia, where rice is a quintessential staple crop. Rice wine is made by the fermentation of rice starch, during which microbes enzymatically convert polysaccharides to sugar and then to ethanol. The Chinese mijiu (most famous being huangjiu), Japanese sake, and Korean cheongju, dansul and takju are some of the most notable types of rice wine.

Rice wine typically has an alcohol content of 10–25% ABV, and is typically served warm. One panel of taste testers arrived at 60 °C (140 °F) as an optimum serving temperature. Rice wines are drunk as a dining beverage in East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian cuisine during formal dinners and banquets, and are also used as cooking wines to add flavors or to neutralize unwanted tastes in certain food items (e.g. seafood such as fish and shellfish).

The Collegium Musicum was one of several types of musical societies that arose in German and German-Swiss cities and towns during the Reformation and thrived into the mid-18th century.

Generally, while societies such as the Kantorei [de] (chorale) cultivated vocal music for church performance and the convivium musicum discussed musical philosophy over a banquet, the collegia musica performed both vocal and instrumental music for pleasure; they focused on instrumental music as it rose in stature during the Baroque era. Though closed amateur societies in concept, collegia frequently included professionals to fill out the music and admitted non-members to performances. Moreover, they often provided music for church, state, and academic occasions and gained the patronage of leading citizens. From the 1660s, their functions largely constituted the beginnings of public concert life in Germany.

The campagne des banquets (banquet campaign) were political meetings during the July Monarchy in France which destabilized the King of the French Louis Philippe I. The campaign officially took place from 9 July 1847 to 25 December 1847, but in fact continued until the February 1848 Revolution during which the Second Republic was proclaimed. During this campaign, the Republican triptych Liberté, égalité, fraternité resurfaced, for example in Lille with Ledru-Rollin.

The banquets were private political meetings which were a way to circumvent the 1835 act prohibiting public assemblies. The first session was in Paris on 9 July 1847, and progressively spread to all of the French provinces. The prohibition of one of these meetings by François Guizot's cabinet, supposed to take place on 14 January 1848 in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, and then of another one set up for 22 February 1848, were the immediate cause of the riots which led to Louis-Philippe's abdication.