Lanterns in the Dark: The Lantern Festival and the Art of Light in Ancient China

There is something irreplaceable about holding a lantern in the dark. The warm paper glow against a cold winter night, the collective exhalation of a crowd watching ten thousand lanterns rise together — this is the Lantern Festival, and it has been rehearsed on the 15th day of the first lunar month for over two thousand years.

Han Dynasty Origins: The Emperor's Midnight Ritual

The Lantern Festival's earliest documented celebration dates to the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), specifically to the reign of Emperor Hanming (reigned 58–75 AD), a ruler known for his interest in Buddhism and astronomy. According to historical accounts, a celestial being descended to the human world during his reign and lit a lantern to guide the emperor back to his palace. To commemorate this event, the emperor ordered lanterns to be lit every year on the 15th of the first lunar month.

While the Buddhist origin story is widely cited, some historians argue that the festival's roots are older and polygenetic — combining harvest celebrations, Taoist fire rituals, and the natural human impulse to mark the first full moon after the winter solstice. What is clear is that by the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD), the Lantern Festival had become an occasion of extraordinary spectacle. The Tang court organized lantern displays in the imperial gardens that reportedly lasted for three consecutive nights, with lanterns shaped like palaces, pagodas, and animals stretching for several kilometres.

Chinese people have celebrated the Lantern Festival since the Han Dynasty, and it became particularly popular during the Tang and Song dynasties. — China Daily

The Tang and Song: The Festival Goes Public

What distinguished the Tang and Song-era Lantern Festival was its democratization. In earlier periods, lantern displays were largely confined to the imperial court. By the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD), cities including Kaifeng (the capital) and Hangzhou opened their streets to public lantern exhibitions. Merchants, temples, and wealthy families competed to build the most elaborate displays. Historical records from Song dynasty Kaifeng describe streets so densely packed with lanterns that movement became difficult, a phenomenon that contemporary urban planners would recognize as 'pedestrian congestion' — though the Song residents simply called it celebration.

The scale of these displays is almost impossible to imagine today. In 1112 AD, during the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song, the imperial lantern show reportedly featured a mechanical lantern that used water-powered wheels to create moving scenes depicting fishing, farming, and battle — an early ancestor of the animated lantern shows that are still produced in Sichuan's Zigong city today.

Tangyuan: The Dumpling That Became a Metaphor

If lanterns are the visual signature of the festival, Tangyuan — the glutinous rice flour dumplings boiled in soup — is its culinary signature. The word Tangyuan sounds identical to 'reunion' (tuan yuan) in Mandarin, making the food an edible pun on the festival's central theme: family togetherness.

The dumplings themselves are simple: glutinous rice flour wrapped around fillings that range from black sesame paste (the most traditional) to peanut butter, red bean, or in modern commercial versions, ice cream. The汤圆 are served in a clear or lightly sweetened soup, making them as much a comfort food as a ritual object. In Taiwan and parts of southern China, it is traditional to eat a number of Tangyuan equal to your age plus one — a wish for increased longevity.

Guessing Lantern Riddles (猜灯谜)

One of the most intellectually engaging traditions of the Lantern Festival is the practice of 猜灯谜 (cai deng mi) — guessing riddles written on lanterns. Temple fairs and market streets would hang riddles written on strips of red paper beneath lanterns, and passersby who solved them could win small prizes: a packet of tea, a fan, a string of copper coins. The riddles are characteristically Chinese in their structure: they often use homophones, classical allusions, and puns that require both literary knowledge and lateral thinking. A good lantern riddle is a compressed poetry puzzle — the answer often depends on understanding a character's multiple possible readings.

This tradition continues today in festival markets across China, from the temple fair in Beijing's Ditan Park to the lantern riddles posted in Singapore's Chinatown during the Chinese New Year season. The intellectual challenge is partly what makes it last — unlike fireworks, which are purely sensory, the riddle tradition engages the mind and creates conversation, making the festival a social experience rather than merely a spectacle.

Zigong Lanterns: From Salt Caves to Global Exports

Modern China's lantern capital is Zigong in Sichuan Province, a city built on salt mining that has been producing lanterns since the Tang Dynasty. The city's craftsmen developed a technique of using silk and paper stretched over wire frames to create lanterns of extraordinary intricacy. During the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912 AD), Zigong's lantern makers began producing the 'auto-mobile' lanterns — complex lantern scenes with rotating figures and moving water wheels powered by candles.

Today, Zigong's lantern industry generates over 5 billion yuan in annual revenue, with the city producing over 80% of China's exported lanterns. The annual Zigong International Dinosaur Lantern Festival attracts over 1 million visitors each winter, blending traditional lantern craft with animatronics and LED technology to create what might charitably be called 'traditional spectacle at scale.'

Sources

• China Daily — "Lantern Festival: Yuan Xiao"
• China.org.cn — Yuanxiao Festival (Lantern Festival) history
• Newsgd.com — Origins and customs of China's Lantern Festival
• BellaOnline — Taoist Theory of Three Yuan and festival origins