Lighting up the world

Lantern festivals add magic to celebrations and their designs are deeply inspired by traditional culture, Yang Xiaoyu reports.

Shortly after organizing the lantern carnival at the Aldrich Bay Park in Hong Kong on Sept 24, Wan Songtao and his team hurried back to their hometown of Zigong in Sichuan province, where another grand lantern show was on the cards.

"The older I grow, the more attached I become to lantern making. Sometimes I find myself mulling over how to design lanterns in my dreams," the 54-year-old craftsman and entrepreneur tells China Daily.

Early in the morning after landing in Zigong, Wan went to inspect work at Chinese Lantern World, which on Sept 27 was transformed into an ocean of light and color by massive lanterns in the shape of humans, flowers, animals and buildings, made to celebrate both the Mid-Autumn Festival, which fell on Sept 29 this year, and National Day on Oct 1.