Chinese Lanterns: Light, Color, and Festival Symbolism

On the fifteenth night of the first lunar month, as the year's first full moon rises over China, millions of red lanterns light up the darkness. The Lantern Festival (元宵节, Yuánxiāo Jié) marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebration with a night of illumination—paper lanterns in every size and shape, from tiny hand-held spheres to massive palace lanterns three meters in diameter, glowing in doorways, hanging from trees, floating on rivers, and rising on bamboo frames into the night sky. To witness this from above—from a rooftop in Xi'an, or the observation deck of Shanghai's Bund—is to see a civilization turn on its lights all at once.

The Origins of the Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival's roots are Buddhist and Taoist. During the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE), Emperor Ming (汉明帝, r. 57–75 CE) ordered the illumination of temples to honor Buddha on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month—a practice that spread from the court to the public. By the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), the festival had become a major public celebration, with imperial lanterns illuminating entire palace complexes and the streets beyond. The Tang emperor Xuanzong (唐玄宗, r. 712–756 CE) was reportedly so fond of lanterns that he had the palace decorated with thousands of them for months at a time.

Three distinct origin stories dominate the festival's folklore. The first ties it to the legend of the Jade Emperor (玉皇大帝), who supposedly sent a heavenly bird to destroy a village that had inadvertently offended him. The village was saved when a wise girl warned the villagers to light lanterns throughout the settlement; when the bird saw the lights from the sky, it mistook the village for the sun and flew away. The second story connects the festival to the Taoist belief in the god of the heavens, who descends to inspect human affairs on the fifteenth day of the first month; lanterns are lit to guide and welcome him. The third, and most romantic, story involves the consort of Emperor Wu of Han, who was imprisoned in the palace garden. Her father, unable to visit, sent lanterns every fifteenth night to signal his presence—a story that has made lantern-releasing a gesture of longing and reunion.

"Every lantern is a small sun that humans have made. On the fifteenth night, we try to return the sky to daylight."

Types of Chinese Lanterns

Chinese lantern types are classified by material, shape, and function, and the distinctions matter culturally. The most common is the hongdeng (红灯笼), the classic red oval lantern—made from silk or polyester fabric stretched over a wire frame, with a wooden bottom and top, and a hanging loop. Red lanterns are associated with festivity, celebration, and the warding off of evil; they appear at Chinese New Year, during weddings, at business openings, and during the Lantern Festival.

The zhutong deng (竹灯笼, bamboo lantern) is among the oldest types, made by weaving thin bamboo strips into a cage and covering it with silk or paper. The weaving pattern creates geometric shadows when the lantern is lit, giving it an ornamental quality that solid paper lanterns lack. Qinglong deng (青龙灯, dragon lanterns) are long, segmented lanterns designed to be carried in processions—held aloft on poles by teams of people, they snake through streets creating the impression of a dragon in motion. The luzhu deng (莲花灯, lotus lanterns) are small, boat-shaped paper lanterns floated on water, common during the Ghost Festival (中元节) as offerings to drowned spirits and during the Lantern Festival as wishes set adrift.

In the imperial tradition, gongting deng (宫灯, palace lanterns) were the most elaborate: hexagonal or octagonal structures with silk panels painted with scenes of court life, flowers, or birds, and often fitted with inner mechanisms that allowed the silk panels to rotate slowly when the lantern was lit—creating a shadow-theater effect. Palace lanterns could take months to complete and were commissioned only by the emperor and highest-ranking officials. A surviving set of palace lanterns from the Qianlong period (1735–1796 CE) in the Palace Museum collection features silk panels painted by court artists with scenes of the four seasons, each panel requiring the collaboration of a textile weaver, a painter, and a frame carpenter.

The Lantern Festival Today

In contemporary China, the Lantern Festival is celebrated with a mixture of traditional and modern elements. Major cities stage elaborate lantern displays (灯会, dēnghuì)—the most famous being the Zigong Lantern Festival in Sichuan, which has been running since 1964 and now features lantern installations on a scale that rivals theme parks, with LED-lit structures that tower tens of meters above the exhibition grounds. The Zigong tradition is particularly significant because Zigong (自贡) is China's historic center of lantern production; the city's lantern-making workshops export to lantern festivals and Chinese New Year celebrations worldwide.

Traditional activities on the night include solving lantern riddles (猜灯谜, cāi dēngmí)—riddles written on slips of paper and attached to lanterns; participants who solve a riddle win a small prize, typically a candy or a red envelope. Eating sweet rice dumplings (元宵, yuánxiāo)—small, round, glutinous-rice balls filled with sweet paste and boiled—is the festival's signature food. The roundness of the dumplings symbolizes completeness and unity, and the act of making them as a family (rolling the rice flour dough between one's palms) is a tactile, communal ritual that connects participants to centuries of domestic tradition.

In Taiwan, the Lantern Festival has become a major public event centered on the release of sky lanterns (天灯) from the town of Pingxi (平溪), a tradition that dates to the 19th century when villagers released lanterns to signal平安 (peace and safety) to family members working in distant fields. Today, thousands of lanterns are released simultaneously during the festival, each carrying written wishes. The Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival has been featured on numerous international travel programs and is one of Taiwan's most recognizable cultural events.

Sources

• China Daily, "Lantern Festival illuminates Chinese culture," 2024
• Xinhua, "Traditional Chinese lanterns: A glow through history," 2023
• China.org.cn, "The Lantern Festival: Light, riddles, and reunion," 2024
• Zigong Lantern Museum, historical records and exhibition catalog, 2022