The Lantern Festival to Celebrate Chinese New Year

Cheng Keqiao in CultureHappy Chinese New Year 2019newsSpecial

Fictional figures at the Zigong Lantern Festival

By Keqiao Cheng, EDITOR

Chongqing - On January 10, the Travel Promotion Conference of the 25th Zigong (Sichuan Province) International Dinosaur Lantern Festival kicked off in Chongqing. This lantern festival, located in Zigong Colored Lantern Park, will open to the public at 13:00 from January 21.

Beautiful China, Colorful Zigong

A featured lantern with complicated decoration

Lasting until late March, this festival takes “Beautiful China, Colorful Zigong” as the theme. More than 130 sets of lanterns highlight their artistic features of being “tall, huge, novel, and beautiful”.

This lantern work indicated the upcoming lunar new year of the Pig

For instance, “Celebrating Together”, “Chinese Music” and “Magnificent Era”, such giant lanterns look picturesque. Also, the “Chinese Music”, shaped like ancient chime bells, features steel-frame structure.

Besides this, partly pasted according to different colors, it mainly adopts the traditional binding process of wires and that of Zigong porcelain. In addition, with over 200,000 pieces of porcelain, the 30-meter-tall set of lanterns weighs 102 tons. Undoubtedly, it has become the “heaviest porcelain lantern” in the history of Zigong Lantern Festival.

Tips for tourists

Lanterns inspired by Chinese operas

Opening at 13:00, the festival will light up the lanterns from 18:00 to 22:30 (duly extended) every day.

The ticket price is RMB 60/person from Monday to Thursday and RMB 90/person from Friday to Sunday. However, from Feb.5 to Feb.19, it costs RMB 130/person dut to the Chinese New Year.

Meanwhile, online tickets purchasing is available from January 15, and tourists can enter the park by scanning the QR code. However, remember each tourist can buy five tickets at most with the ID card.

Also, Zigong downtown has built 8 additional parking lots with about 13,000 parking spots free of charge for tourists. Moreover, there are 4 free bus routes and 7 free service stations. It takes about 3 hours to drive from Chongqing to Zigong, which is about 200 kilometers.

Source: CQCB